


Cut From The Team

by rockykelboa



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Anxiety, Depression, Emo, Emo Vegeta, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Drugs, Sad Vegeta (Dragon Ball), Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, Vegeta (Dragon Ball) vs Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 07:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 164,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15925811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockykelboa/pseuds/rockykelboa
Summary: Bulma Briefs is a smart, yet flighty college student trying to figure out her future. Distracted by the social scene of hardcore music and her love life, or lack thereof, she finds herself chasing after an antisocial, jerk of a guitarist who seems to be stirring up drama in the local scene. Originally, this was intended a little fun piece to timestamp the emo era, but it's actually a pretty damn emo story after the first few chapters. Also, this is the first fanfic or multi-chapter thing I've ever done, so we'll see how this goes!





	1. So Obviously Desperate

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place circa 2002, so some of the references are dated - like when hot topic used to be primarily a goth-punk shop where people bought spiked belts and rubber bracelets (and CDs!), and when skinny jeans did not exist for men, so guys wearing girl's jeans was a common thing. Anyway... thanks [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) for the read through.
> 
> *Forgot to mention that all of the chapter titles, as well as the title of this story, are borrowed from TBS's _Tell All Your Friends_ lyrics.

Bulma laced up a black pair of chucks and stood to look in the mirror. She fixed her sweeping turquoise bangs and cocked a hip, checking herself up and down. A black leather mini skirt, Goku’s old _Megadeath_ tee, which she cut the sleeves from and tied in a knot at her waist, and a faded denim jacket to complete the look. Good enough for a hardcore show? Eh, whatever. The scene was always changing. In high school, it was all baggy cargo and bright halter tops, circa No Doubt’s _Tragic Kingdom_. Post-millennium, most of Bulma’s wardrobe consisted of tight fitting blacks and denims, with the occasional pop of neon colors in her accessories. These days, even the guys were buying slim cut jeans from the women’s section.

“This is too much eye make-up,” Chi-Chi groaned as she stomped over the mess of debris that typically plagued Bulma’s bedroom floor to stand next to her in the mirror. “I feel goth.”

“Girl, it’s not goth. You look smoking hot, and you’ll fit right in.” Bulma adjusted the studded belt she lent her roommate so the clasp rested on the side of her hip. “Don’t ask. It’s not at all practical, but this is just how everyone wears them.”

Chi-Chi cast a beleaguered look to their reflections as Bulma fussed with her hair, trying to tease some volume into Chi-Chi’s long, silky strands.

“You’re going to love them, Cheech. I mean, I haven’t heard the new stuff yet, but honestly, even if they weren’t my friends, I would still be into them.”

“You’re into some weird shit though, B,” Chi-Chi noted, shaking the dozens of rubber bracelets that decorated her wrist.

“Oh please. I have great taste. I introduced you to my very best friend in the whole world.” She hugged Chi-Chi around her waist. “And now I have two best friends.” Bulma winked at her sullen roommate, who finally conceded a small smile. “So, you better not ever break up, because I’ve grown way too fond of you!” she added.

“Wow, thanks! No pressure!” Chi-Chi rolled her eyes and reached into her pocket for her buzzing cell phone. “Speaking of Goku, he says: _r u here yet?!_ ”

Bulma glanced at the alarm clock on her nightstand. “Shit, we gotta go! They’re on in fifteen!” she chimed, grabbing her friend’s arm to lead them out of the apartment.

Goku wasn’t an anxious person, quite the opposite in fact, but in the days leading up to the concert, he seemed uncharacteristically stressed—sending Bulma multiple texts to confirm that she would escort Chi-Chi to the show and not leave her side. It was as if Goku imagined that his straight-laced beau would take one look around the dingy venue full of pierced scenesters and tattooed metalheads and run back to her preppy university, never to speak to him again. Totally ridiculous, of course.

The more likely source of his stress was that his band hadn’t played in over four months, not since their forced hiatus when his older cousin Turles quit after knocking-up his girlfriend, a delay the band’s record label wasn’t happy about.

The band was founded three years ago by Goku’s older brother Raditz and cousin Turles, with Goku only joining after high school once he could tour. The cousins called their band _Oozaru_ , named for a mythical beast from some video game they liked—a Donkey Kong knock-off that purged planets of evil, reptilian overlords by drawing their power from the moons. That backstory and the insane amount of money wasted on t-shirts depicting the creature were the extent of Turles’s and Raditz’s contributions to the endeavor.

The cousins’ vision for the band was lackluster at best, a pathetic attempt to avoid day jobs, party and get laid. Raditz and Turles put in the least amount of effort possible to keep the band and their lifestyle afloat.

Goku, despite his youth, became the lead driver of the band’s real success, writing most of the music and turning what was a shitty screamo band into post-hardcore palatable, with clean vocals and poppy key signatures. He changed their name to _Saiyans_ , a nod to their family’s heritage that held deeper meaning for him than some fleeting video game character.

Despite Goku’s lack of business sense that frequently left them getting dicked by promoters, his raw talent began to draw a considerable crowd of strangers, as opposed to just a handful of his brother’s loyal friends. Goku was even able to get them a deal with Namek Records, a small indie label, for three record cycles. Though, they had yet to record even one.

If Raditz was to be given an ounce of credit for the band, it was that he found them a drummer with industry experience. Nappa was older than the rest of the guys, a veteran drum tech from North City who moved out west to take over his uncle’s music retail stores, where both Raditz and Goku held full-time jobs. Nappa looked like a skinhead on parole, a big burly man with a shaved head and horseshoe mustache. But despite his looks, he brought a calming energy to the group. He’d been in the scene for so long it seemed that nothing rattled him. In fact, it was Nappa who found them a replacement for Turles. A young, semi-famous heavy metal guitarist from his hometown in North City.

“He’s the worst,” Chi-Chi decried again, brushing fast food wrappers from the passenger seat of Bulma’s car. She was not a fan of Nappa’s recruit. Since the guitarist’s arrival less than a month ago, Chi-Chi wouldn’t shut up about him, ranting and raving at every slight the guy made, which of course, intrigued Bulma endlessly.

“Last week, he called me a titless wench when I wouldn’t give him a ride to the gas station for a snack.” Chi-Chi whined.

The new guy had temporarily been crashing at the house the band shared in the West City burbs, a run-down place that Chi-Chi unfortunately had to endure through the end of summer before she and Bulma signed their apartment lease near campus.

“You’re entirely the reason that I’m excited to meet him, Cheech.” Bulma admitted.

Chi-Chi hated the new guy so much that the girls spent an embarrassing amount of time scanning music blogs and stalking MySpace for any mention of the infamous Vegeta Ouji. Though unfortunately, there was little information to uncover. The man was an enigma. He never took interviews, and his MySpace profile hadn’t been updated in over a year. His profile photo was taken from behind, where he was just a small figure on stage, holding his instrument over his head to a crowd of ten thousand. _Clearly just showing off_ , Chi-Chi chided.

The only information they gleaned from the internet was that he was somewhat of a prodigy, recruited to a world-renowned metal band called _Icejin_ at fifteen and kicked out of said band just this spring at twenty-two. The blogs offered nothing but conjecture; where he was from, how Icejin found him or why he was kicked out were all hearsay and contradicting stories. The spectrum was wide. Some said he was related to the band’s frontman, while others said he was a runaway teen.

“He’s an asshole, B.” Chi-Chi reasserted. “At best, he’ll ignore you, but more likely, he’ll make you feel like you’re the dirt under his precious string-stroking fingernails.”

Bulma found Chi-Chi’s stories hilarious. Every resentment she held for the new guy sounded straight from the book of Chi-Chi herself—a self-centered perfectionist that bossed everyone around. Still, Bulma could understand how her roommate having met her match would irk her to no end. Like two tidal waves charging in opposite directions, they were bound to make rough water.

“This is the most that I’ll have seen Goku all week,” she lamented.

They moved into their apartment a week ago, but Chi-Chi complained that she hasn’t been able to hang out with Goku since Vegeta arrived, the latter having written a handful of new songs, which the entire band had been coerced to learn in time for this show. Band practice had been a nightly event for the past month. In conjunction with Nappa’s new store opening soon, Goku and the rest of the band have had time for little else.

Bulma’s phone buzzed from the cup holder in the car. “Can you check that?”

Chi-Chi flipped the phone open. “It’s Yamcha. He says: _’Want to hang later? Drinks?’_ I’m gonna reply, _’Fuck off, busy with a hot date’._ ”

“No, be nice!” Bulma urged. “Tell him I’ll call him after the show.”

“Ugh, Bulma no!” Her friend pleaded. “It will be just like last time. You’ll hang out, drink too much, and he’ll sweet talk you back into this cycle of _‘hey remember when we were homecoming king and queen in high school, and I took your virginity’_?" Chi-Chi feigned a barf. “You’re a grown ass woman. It’s time to move on from this high school sweetheart bullshit and get out there! Play the field.”

“Tch. I have been playing the field,” Bulma scoffed.

“No... you went out once with that creep from your robotics class, and you had a one night stand with the clingy barista at Senzu Bean. You need to actually _date_ respectable people without the ghost of Yamcha hanging around waiting to be resurrected.”

“Fine. Find me a worthy specimen, one that doesn’t stalk me around campus or text me twenty times the next day about forgetting my belt at his place, and I’ll consider it.”

“What about Raditz?” Chi-Chi joked, poking Bulma in the shoulder as she pulled into a parking space.

“Ugh. I’d rather wake up every morning for the rest of my life with Smash Mouth’s _All Star_ stuck in my head than wake up next to Raditz.” Not that Raditz was a bad guy, he just felt more like a brother, an obnoxious, dirty older brother that constantly hit on her since she hit puberty.

Tugging at her entry wristband, Bulma stood on her tiptoes, scanning the dingy venue for a familiar face among the crowd of angular haircuts with dramatic bangs and the plain old _‘I don’t give a fuck if I look like a demonic hippy’_ look that many of the older, metal dudes were sporting.

On stage, some metalcore band chugged away at peak volumes, their lead singer growling like he was being exorcized as he whipped his stringy long hair and howled into the microphone, while a mob of kids dressed like Hot Topic employees swung their arms, shoving and kicking each other at the front of the stage.

“Who would possibly find that entertaining?” Chi-Chi remarked.

“Eh, just think of it as a modern-day waltz... except people get punched in the face.” Bulma grabbed Chi-Chi’s hand to lead her around the perimeter of the room, avoiding the flailing limbs of the crowd, and spotted Krillin at the merch booth.

“Hey buddy!” Bulma greeted her old high school comrade cheerily, watching as Chi-Chi examined the array of t-shirts pinned to the wall, her nose pinched in a curious disgust.

“What do you think, Chi-Chi?” Krillin asked innocently, not having seen her this far out of her element before to recognize the woman’s revulsion.

Chi-Chi’s eyes scanned the grim designs—t-shirts trademarked with blood or skeletal frames, exploding human body parts or decapitated animals.

“It makes me want to cry,” Chi-Chi whispered without a hint of jest.

“These ones all yours?” Bulma pointed behind Krillin’s head to the Saiyans’ shirts, where she recognized many of the old King Kong attire among some new designs. They were all black with a simple red emblem: a three-pronged ‘V’ shape made of arrows with a half circle below it.

“Yeah, those are courtesy of Vegeta,” Krillin said and tossed his hand at the minimalist artwork. “I don’t know what the hell it means, but Goku liked it, so... whatever I guess. They’re selling more than the monkey shirts.” He shrugged and handed the girls their passes that would let them backstage.

Goku leapt from the couch when he spotted them in the doorway of the tiny greenroom, wrapping both girls in a fierce hug that practically lifted their toes from the floor.

Goku was always one to get over-excited before a gig only to have his perfectly determined focus take over once the stage lights flicked on. But tonight, his energy was extreme. It wafted from his pores like the mist off a freshly cracked Red Bull. Clearly, the guy was on edge. Bulma hadn’t seen him this anxious since he awaited his final report card when he was just one failing grade away from having to repeat his senior year of high school.

He let the girls go to shake out every limb and crack his neck like he was warming up for a fight. Thankfully, Chi-Chi nabbed his attention with a sweet kiss, her dainty hands pressed to his cheeks.

Bulma smiled at her friends’ affections, happy that she played cupid to their little embrace. Fuck, man. Chi-Chi and Goku were her crowning achievement, a predestined hook-up that she was surprised worked out as well as it had so far, Goku never having dated a girl in his nineteen years of life. It was cute that he adored Chi-Chi so much, and Bulma was proud to be the catalyst for their budding relationship, as opposite as the couple seemed on the surface.

“Where’s the new guy? I want to meet him,” Bulma said.

Another giant arm swung around Bulma’s neck from behind, and a familiar voice, breath reeking of whiskey chimed in, “Looking for me?”

“Hi Raditz.” There was no mistaking whose forearm was home to a topless Rosie The Riveter tattoo. She couldn’t be mad at him for it though, since Raditz was too dense to understand what an insult his tattoo represented to women everywhere.

Bulma wiped his whiskey soaked kiss from her cheek and ducked out from under his arm. “Not you. Vegeta.”

Both Raditz and Chi-Chi scoffed.

“Psh. You’ll be sorely disappointed.” Chi-Chi rolled her eyes.

She threw a pacifying arm around her jittery boyfriend’s waist. Goku’s body seemed to calm, somewhat. He looked down to his girlfriend with an innocent smile.

“Come on, Chi-Chi. You just gotta get to know him. That’s all.”

Chi-Chi crinkled her nose and shook her head. “Why do you always defend him? He’s not even nice to you!”

“He’s just got a funny sense of humor.”

The two bickered affectionately as the din of the audience applause overcame the sonic chords of the previous band’s finale, and the house music rose over the P.A.

A gravelly voice rang from the hallway. “Hey idiots, get your shit. We’re up.”

Goku’s face lit with excitement as he pulled away from Chi-Chi to grab his bass. The girls followed him, finding their place on the fringes of the stage.

“That’s him?” Bulma scanned the new guy for the first time. He was short, almost as short as her, with a lean, athletic physique and dark features—thick, brooding eyebrows and black, messy hair that spiked up and around his head like the licks of a flame; a red bandana was tied in a band across his forehead.

He struggled to extract his cell phone and wallet from the pockets of his girl jeans and unzipped his black hoodie, folding it meticulously and stacking his personal effects on top. A sleeve of tattoos nearly covered his left arm, and one small tattoo that Bulma recognized from the T-shirts was printed on the inside of his right wrist.

She didn’t realize she’d been ogling him until he was standing in front of her, his black eyes boring into her own as he shoved his belongings into her arms.

“Woman, hold this. Don’t lose anything,” Vegeta demanded.

Absently, Bulma took his belongings, clasping them into her chest. Her paralyzed lips tried to stutter an introduction, but he had already spun his attention back to his equipment, threading his head through his guitar strap.

“He’s kind of cute,” Bulma mused once she regained control of her voice. She snuck a whiff of his sweatshirt, a mix of quality cigarettes and a laundry detergent.

“Hell no, Bulma!” Chi-Chi scoffed. “You realize that jerk just turned you into a coat rack?”

She shrugged indifferently and continued to stare at Vegeta’s profile, tuning his guitar while the house music faded and the lights dimmed. Cheers swelled from the small venue’s packed crowd, where a few distinct voices yelled Vegeta’s name.

“Hey West City!” Raditz shouted into the mic at the front of the stage, holding up a beer to the throng of faces before him. “I know it’s been a while, but we’re happy to be back! New songs. New lineup. Sounds like some of you already know we stole Icejin’s guitarist.”

Raditz pointed behind him at Vegeta, who looked distinctly bored by the crowd’s cheers of approval. His stony features were fixed on his bandmate’s back, as if beckoning him to get on with the show.

“Don’t believe the rumors! He wasn’t kicked out, he just thought our shit was better,” Raditz shrugged arrogantly, not noticing the guitarist’s dramatic eye roll as Vegeta spun on his heel toward the back of the stage. He began to pluck a few strings impatiently over Raditz’s discourse, which thankfully the frontman caught onto.

“Well, anyway... If you think the new shit sucks, you can blame him,” Raditz laughed.

Vegeta flicked him off and turned his guitar to face his amp. He struck a high chord, letting feedback pulse through the venue before he spun back to the audience and stepped on a pedal to let the feedback loop. He began to chug the driving riff of their first song over the top, and the rest of the band joined after the first two measures.

An energetic fill blasted from Nappa’s drums and Raditz cast out the lead vocals in his whiny, raw tones. The man didn’t have the best voice; in fact, he could barely carry a tune, yet somehow tonight, with these songs, it kind of almost worked. Darkly poetic lyrics shot from the insensitive brute, and his brother joined as backup, sometimes taking the lead in a call-and-response style that lent texture to the instruments around them.

In fact, none of the new songs were what Bulma expected. They were all much darker and rawer than the pop-punk songs that Goku had written—explosive guitar riffs and a layered, almost chaotic interplay between the instruments and vocals, most of them clean; some intensified into screaming, raspy angst. All of which made Bulma feel like her heart was being ripped out while it was still beating.

The crowd’s energy was contagious as they swarmed each other at the front of the stage. Their intensity vibrated under the surface of her skin, making her hairs stand on end as the music erupted from the amps.

She watched the guitarist with keen interest. He wasn’t showing off with grand movements like Raditz, or to some extent Goku. Instead, he appeared poised, almost regal in his posture. Every stroke of his guitar played with the utmost precision, yet it took away nothing from the energy that seemed to emanate from him. He no longer looked bored, but rather in his element.

Everyone in the room was under their spell through the entire set, jumping and swaying, knocking each other around in the pit. Their shouts and whistles overwhelmed the band as the guitar feedback rang out and dimmed with the stage lights.

Ears buzzing, the girls caught their breath as they waited at the side of the stage for the boys to wrap-up cables and cage their instruments. Bulma ignored the vibrating phone in her pocket. Instead, she watched Vegeta haul his equipment offstage. His _Suicide Silence_ t-shirt clung tighter to his torso now that it was soaked in his sweat. Each time he passed, lugging cases and cables, her heart beat faster and blood flushed her cheeks. She felt stupid for it, like some star-struck fan.

Once the stage had cleared, the girls made their way backstage. Bulma half-heartedly listened to her friend swoon over the Goku’s performance. Chi-Chi tried to pry compliments from Bulma to feed her beau that would make her sound like she knew what she was talking about. Bulma ignored her, searching the area relentlessly for Vegeta. But the guitarist seemed to have vanished.

“Helloooo!” Chi-Chi poked Bulma in the arm.

“What!?” Bulma said, a bit annoyed at her friend’s sharp finger in her bicep. Though, her jab had brought Bulma to her senses.

What was she fawning over him for? He hadn’t bothered to introduce himself. Instead, he ignored her completely and was now nowhere to be found. Maybe Chi-Chi was right, and she was simply a glorified coat rack. Fuck that. Bulma Briefs was not one to wait around to get noticed by some headstrong has-been musician from North City. She was an adorable twenty-one-year-old with more academic awards than most people earn in their lifetimes, beauty and brains. He should be fawning after her!

“Look Cheech, Goku won’t care if you know specifics about the music or not, so long as your feedback is genuine,” Bulma replied to her friend distractedly.

“I need to call Yamcha back. Can you hold this shit?” She held out her handful of Vegeta’s belongings to Chi-Chi’s crossed arms. Her roommate offered nothing but a surly shake of her long black tresses.

“Not a chance. You volunteered.”

“Fine. Then can you catch a ride to the house with Goku? I’ll be there a little later,” Bulma said, dropping Vegeta’s phone and wallet into her bag.

“Yeah, but thought you weren’t going to meet up with Yamcha,” Chi-Chi whined.

“I changed my mind. Just one drink though, I promise.” Bulma fished in the pocket of Vegeta’s hoodie and extracted a pack of American Spirits.

“At least he has good taste,” she said, placing one between her lips before she slipped out the exit.


	2. So Desperately Obvious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is just for fun and sloppily written for my own enjoyment. But I hope it's fun for other people too, because that's kind of the whole point. Now that I'm on Ch. 6 in editing, it's getting way more emo than I intended, but this chapter is still very light! Comments and feedback are most welcome :)
> 
> Thanks again [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) for the read through.

The neighborhood looked straight out of a dystopian movie, especially in the dark. Abandoned furniture and random appliances sat discarded in the lawns behind busted chain link fences. Most of the homes on the block sat in disrepair for decades, their sunken foundations making them appear as if they were caving in on themselves. 

Bulma slammed her car door and strode with purpose toward the boys’ own squalid palace, the muffled commotion from the party growing louder with every step as thumping dance beats were carried in the breeze. The house was lit up from every open window, where music and voices poured into the cool autumn air. 

Unreliable as ever, Yamcha hadn’t returned her texts or phone calls, which put her in an all too familiar justice driven mood, mixed with a tinge of insecurity. She needed drinks and compliments, lots of them.

Unfortunately, as Bulma turned up the driveway, the last person that fit the bill to save her mood was hunched at the back of Raditz’s van, the doors splayed open as he dug around inside. Maybe now that he wasn’t distracted by his concert, he would be open to a real conversation with a pretty girl like a normal guy. If that was possible, the pendulum on this shitty night might just swing back her way.

“Hey!” Bulma greeted him with the most cheerful tone that she could muster.

“Fuck off. I’m busy.” He didn’t even glance in her direction, just kept his head down, counting piles of cash, using the floor of the van as a shelf.

Bulma slipped his American Apparel hoodie out from under her arm and dangled it in front of his face. That got his attention.

Vegeta tipped his head in her direction, his brows bent in a sharp scowl. “Figured you’d stole it,” he said. His tone was accusing, but his rich, raspy voice was far from what she imagined for a guy his size. It was sexy in a way, she hated to admit.

Bulma straightened her posture and tossed the garment into the van.

“Nope. Just didn’t feel like waiting around for your sorry ass.” She watched him wrest his cigarettes from the pocket and light one up. 

“Yeah, well someone had to make sure we got paid.” He exhaled smoke from his nose like an angry bull, and continued to focus on his task. Whether he was shy or annoyed by her presence, she couldn’t tell, but the lack of eye contact was rattling her confidence.

“Good night?” Bulma shifted her gaze to the money he dealt into neat stacks. 

“Decent for a shitty emo band.”

“Shitty band?” She quirked an eyebrow. “Didn’t _you_ write most of the set?”

“Don’t you have a party to get to?” he snapped. 

Bulma shrugged. She reached over his arm and grabbed a cigarette for herself from his pack, eying him as she did. He made no indication to protest.

“I’m Bulma, by the way.” She extended a hand into his line of vision. Finally, the boy looked up, his expression cold and rigid, as if her outstretched palm had trespassed beyond some invisible boundary. In the dark, his irises appeared pitch black, almost alien—eyes she wouldn’t have believed existed before she met Goku and Raditz. He could be their brother, and was clearly from Saiyan decent.

Reluctantly, he took her hand. She felt the calluses of his fingertips brush against the heel of her palm, built-up from years of pressing against the steel strings of his guitar. His eyes quickly flitted back to the piles of cash as he let go and resumed counting.

Bulma cleared her throat, “And you are...?”

He didn’t respond at first, flicking the last few bills from his hands.

“We’re doing the thing where you pretend you don’t know my name?” He didn’t look up, just began to straighten the individual piles between his fingers.

That annoyance clamped-up her chest, her own frustration squeezing the air from her lungs in an attempt to keep her from screaming and cuffing the back of his head. In her short life, Yamcha was the only person to ever make her feel irrelevant, but that was due to his simple ignorance. Having been her first and only boyfriend since middle school, Yamcha tended to take her for granted, which was partly her fault since she always took him back after dozens of breakups.

Vegeta, however, was eliciting a different frustration. It was as if he thought she was some hair-brained acolyte, lining his pictures on her mirror and seeking a hook-up for the chance to drop his name around the scene. He had no idea who she was, and what bothered her most, was that he didn’t care to find out.

“Oh please, north boy. I’m not some parasitic groupie. I’ve been best friends with Goku for over a decade,” Bulma informed him.

“Who?” Vegeta sneered, whipping his gaze back to hers.

“Your bassist!” Was he kidding? Maybe he really did have a twisted sense of humor.

“Oh, him.... Kak-a-rot,” he intoned, accenting every consonant.

“That’s not what he likes to be called.” 

Goku was technically just a nickname his adoptive grandpa gave him, but it was the only name he used. Raditz and all his brother’s friends called him by his given name just to annoy him. Vegeta seemed to be taking a cue from Raditz and was being an ass on purpose.

Maybe if she changed tactics, he’d be receptive. Rather than antagonizing him, she tried flattery. “The show was great, by the way. You guys must have really been practicing. I haven’t seen Goku in nearly a month.”

“It was shit,” Vegeta said. “Raditz is a fucking drunk moron with no talent.”

“Wow, harsh...” Bulma agreed to a small extent, at least that Raditz abused substances and wasn’t living up to his full potential, but by no means was he an talentless moron. “Well, I thought it sounded awesome.”

“Then you’re a moron too.”

“ _Tch_... Are you always this charming?” She was starting to lose her cool. There were only so many insults a girl could endure in one night. Kami, she needed a drink… _drinks_.

A dramatic groan escaped Vegeta’s chest as he turned to her. He took a step into her personal bubble, mere inches away from where her feet were grounded to the pavement. A soapy smell wafted underneath the cigs, and the flood lights glinted off his damp hair. Up close, his eyes were scary. They resembled Goku’s, but there was none of Goku’s warmth behind them, just savage intensity that nearly made her step back. But Bulma refused to move. She dropped her shoulders and lifted her chin with all the pride she could possibly impress upon him. One side of his lips twisted up, and his eyes narrowed as he quirked his head to blow smoke, not all that successfully, away from her face.

“I’m prince fucking charming,” he rasped, his face tipped within an inch of her own.

The hard edges of his features, the inky pits of his eyes, they pulled at her like he was going eat her alive, yet it wasn’t lust she saw behind them. It was more like intimidation, a need for control.

She couldn’t make herself blink. Bulma cursed internally as her stomach somersaulted, danced around with a nervous energy that her logic demanded she wasn’t supposed to feel. Pride told her to shove him away, but her body called for the opposite—to jump him, throw herself at him, roll around in the yard with him. _Stop it_ , she begged her mind to quit imagining the taste of his tongue in her mouth.

The squeak of the front door opening pulled their attention. A group of scantily clad girls piled onto the front porch, their drunken squeals distracting Bulma from her dilemma. One of them ran around the corner to puke in the yard.

A disgusted sneer formed on Vegeta’s face, and he turned back to his work. He rolled each wad of cash like a drug dealer, securing them with rubber bands.

“Here, make yourself useful,” he said, shoving the rolls of money into her arms. “The small one’s for the midget.”

“Prince charming my ass,” Bulma sneered, tossing her hair as she marched past the vapid skanks into the crowded house, arms full of cash.

It seemed that Raditz invited the entire venue. Strangers were piled into every room and hallway. Many of them were stripped down to their underwear, drinking, dancing, smoking pot and whatever else as some dance-punk band threatened to blow a fuse from the house’s living room speakers.

Pushing through the sweaty crowd to the kitchen, Bulma found Raditz and Nappa pouring shots of tequila at the counter. Raditz’s long black mane ran down his bare back. Once she was near enough to see over the counter, she realized he was clad in just a tight pair of boxer briefs and combat boots.

Bulma slammed two rolls of money on the counter, sliding them toward the band members.

“You’re welcome,” she said, snagging a shot from Raditz’s hand and taking it down with a twisted frown. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Didn’t you read the theme on my MySpace? _Dress to get screwed!_ ” Raditz said, wrapping his thick arm around her shoulders. Bulma cringed and ducked out of his reach.

“Classy... One more.” She held out her shot glass. Nappa poured them another round. “So, where’s your costume?” She eyed the large man up and down who was still fully clothed in the same sweaty _Napalm Death_ shirt from the show.

Nappa laughed and quirked an eyebrow, his eyes darting around the room full of nearly nude twenty-somethings. “I’m too old for this shit.”

Bulma smiled warmly. Nappa was a decent guy. Though she doubted he was much more than thirty, he had a wise old man vibe. However, from the look of him, she guessed that once upon a time he’d been involved in some nefarious shit of his own back in North City.

Nearly three thousand miles from West City, North was a densely-populated metropolis. Where West sprawled its ten million citizens across nearly five thousand square miles, North hosted roughly the same population in just three hundred.

Bulma had been to North only once before with her father, and knew the city’s reputation, both good and bad.

For the better, North City was home to impressive feats of human engineering, like the skyscrapers whose spires stretched half a mile toward the heavens. Kami, how she vividly remembered standing at the top of one of the structures on a stormy day while Mother Nature unleashed her worst. To feel the impervious building sway ever so slightly as hundred-mile-per-hour wind bore down was nothing less than transcendental for the daughter of the world’s greatest engineer.

The climate of North City was unyielding—a frozen hellscape for most of the year, sub-zero temperatures and a biting wind-chill that could freeze your extremities in mere minutes if left exposed. The other half of the year, the city embraced wicked hurricanes off its coast, only intermittently allowing its citizens a temperate reprieve from its harsh conditions.

The culture of North City was much like its weather, stormy and unforgiving. It was a grey, crowded place that did not lend helping hands willingly. There was a Darwinian streak in the northerners that demanded strength of character and self-sufficiency. There were simply too many people living in too small of place with too few resources to care. The city’s government had some mentorship programs built into the public-school system to help children, but beyond that, it was eat or be eaten.

Bulma expected the characters that emerged from North in her fair West would be eccentric at the very least, at worst, hostile. Nappa was neither. He was the most chill motherfucker she’d ever met, like a giant, scary looking Buddha.

He held out a third shot to Bulma. “You look like you need this,” he said. “What’s up?”

All the stupid guy drama came rushing back to piss her off. “Your boy,” Bulma started, fixing her face in a dramatic sneer, “Is a fucking piece of work.”

Nappa smiled sheepishly. “Vegeta? Yeah, he’s a punk.”

“He’s a complete ass,” Bulma corrected. Raditz laughed, nodding his head in agreement as he filled their shot glasses for a fourth time. “Somebody needs to tell him to let some air out of that ego. It was just some stupid metal band. It’s not like he was Justin fucking Timberlake.”

“Icejin’s got nothing to do with it. He was a frosty little brat when I met him. That was...” He looked up at the ceiling as he tried to count. “Damn, almost fifteen years ago!”

“Well that makes it worse! What kind of parents condone that kind of behavior?” Not that her own parents were skilled disciplinarians, but at least they raised her and her sister to respect people. Maybe it was a North thing to teach your children to be condescending shitheads.

Nappa quirked an eyebrow toward the nearly naked man next to him.

“Raditz can field that one.” He clapped a hand Raditz’s bare shoulder. “Raditz, how did you grow up to be such a fine, upstanding...”

“Hunk of man meat?” Raditz flicked his long, shaggy hair behind his shoulders and gave his best superhero impression, puffing-up his muscular chest with his hands on his hips.

“Sure, we’ll go with that,” Nappa said.

Raditz flexed a bicep and kissed it. “I formed this temple all on my own.” 

Bulma rolled her eyes at the goons, but their point wasn’t lost on her, Raditz having emigrated from the Saiyan-Tuffle war after losing his own parents. “Stop it, you guys. Are all you Saiyans refugees?”

“Ding, ding, ding!” Nappa held up an index finger and swung it over to Raditz. “What do we got for her?”

Raditz scanned the dirty dishes and junk mail sprawled across the kitchen counter and picked up a coupon. “Five dollars off your next oil change!” He slid the card in front of her.

A thread of guilt knit into Bulma’s conscience. Maybe she was being too critical of Vegeta. She remembered how Raditz acted out for many years after losing their parents to the war. Goku was too young at the time to harbor the same resentment that Raditz felt toward everyone around him. Still, Raditz grew out of his beef and developed a personable demeanor... eventually. He still had his issues and was by no means a model citizen, but overall, Raditz was warm and genuine. In fact, Bulma now viewed him as one of her closest friends.

Vegeta, on the other hand, seemed cold and untrusting. There was a viciousness behind his eyes that triggered her fight or flight when he bore down on her in the driveway. Yet, somehow his animosity made her more attracted to him. Was she really that cliché? Attracted to bad men? It couldn’t possibly be a lack of self-worth that drew her to him. Maybe it was the opposite. She was always adventurous and competitive. Maybe she wanted a challenge, and that’s why she stayed with Yamcha for so long. It also explained why her recent dates, if that’s what you could call them, didn’t last longer than twenty-four hours. Those guys were too nice, too adoring, which made them completely uninteresting.

There was something about Vegeta, even before tonight when he was just a figurative thorn in Chi-Chi’s side that intrigued Bulma to the point of obsession. The alcohol that was now making its way through her veins only amplified her fascination.

“What’s his deal, Nappa? Dish!” Bulma grew excited, realizing that she was finally going to get her questions answered without relying on internet forum gossip and MySpace comments. Oh, would Chi-Chi be proud.

“What do you want to know?” Nappa shrugged with as much innocence as could be portrayed by a man of his stature.

“Everything! How’d you meet him?”

Nappa spun his shot between his fingers, as if he was scanning his brain for a summary. “Volunteer credits we were forced to work in high school, some mentorship program where they matched us with little kids based on our interests. I was paired with him ‘cause of the music thing and the Saiyan thing, I assume.”

Nappa stopped and took his shot, as if that was that and the rest was history. Bulma knew better. She pressed him on, eager to crack the code on her and Chi-Chi’s personal enigma. “Then what?”

“What? Why the curiosity Briefs? We just hung out once a week for the next few years. I took him to concerts, movies, pizza and shit like that.”

“That’s sweet, Nappa!” She grinned at the oaf. “You were like his big brother?”

“Sort of. He didn’t like me at first. He doesn’t like me now, to be honest. But he definitely liked kicking my ass at video games.”

Nappa glanced toward the front door, like he was checking to see if Vegeta was in earshot. Vegeta didn’t strike her as the type to want people hashing out his past behind his back, or to his face for that matter. Though now that the tequila was well in hand, nothing was going to stop them.

“How old was he?”

“Seven going on eight.” Nappa raised his hand to his waist to display the boy’s height. “Lippy little fucker! I was a teenager, so I got a kick out of the demanding little shit. Cuss words are funny coming from a seven-year-old.”

Bulma’s face dipped sympathetically thinking about Raditz again. When she met him in grade school, she always felt sorry for him, for both the brothers, losing their family just like that. Though, Goku had been so young when it happened, he seemed less affected. It was Raditz who struggled with their parents’ passing, being transported from a war zone to live with a stranger who didn’t even speak the same language at the time. She ignored him back then, because Raditz was mean to Goku, to herself, and especially to their adoptive Grandpa Gohan. She was just realizing now why the older boy behaved that way, why they hadn’t been friends back then. He didn’t have anyone to commiserate, not even his little brother.

Nappa glanced at the door again and took another shot before he continued. “After I got my volunteer credits, I stuck around after graduation. But eventually, I had some opportunities touring with bands, and I was a young, advantageous piece of shit myself, so I left. I told Vegeta I would stay in touch when I was home, which I had every intention of doing. Of course, he acted like he didn’t give a shit either way, but during the first tour with Icejin, I got a call from social services saying he’s been missing for weeks.”

“He ran away?” Bulma asked. She guessed that she and Raditz were the first beneficiaries of Nappa’s confession, the way he looked at the counter as he spoke, twirling a shot glass between his fingers. Though, he gushed like an open valve, making Bulma feel bad for egging him on in his compromised condition. It was easy to tell when Nappa was drunk; his northern accent, heavy on the _ohs_ and _ahs_ came on strong and pitchy, and his hands flicked and waved to carry his words.

“The minute I got home, I started looking for him and asking around the usual places these kids would turn up, but nothing. He’d vanished. It sucked. The bastard ran away, and I felt totally responsible for him. He was barely a teenager, living on the streets or dead for all I knew. It ate me up for years thinking about what might have happened to him. Not a damn day passed that I didn’t wonder.”

Nappa’s voice cracked uncharacteristically, which caused Bulma to trade eyes with Raditz, both unfamiliar with this side of the big man. He was always a calming presence, but not sentimental by any means. It shocked them to hear him waver.

Nappa carried on, his tone improving a pitch as he smiled at the countertop, “Then one night, Icejin is playing a show, this big arena in North called King Cold’s, and guess who I found sneaking backstage at a twenty-one-plus concert?”

“Yeah buddy!” Raditz raised his shot glass in approval.

Bulma beamed at the big guy, “You must have been so happy!”

“Hell no! I could have smacked Kid into the otherworld,” Nappa said, but his grin spoke otherwise.

“I never told social services that I found him. They would have taken him back, and he would have just run away again, so I _adopted_ him, you could say.” He threw air quotes around the term. “We took him out on the road with us. Kept an eye on him, and we’d throw him a few bucks for guitar tech. Plus, he liked being on tour. He’d show off to the crew, ripping guitar on the bus and backstage, and of course, all the gals thought he was adorable. After a year or two, he ended up in the band.” Nappa shrugged and snatched-up the bottle, pouring three more shots.

Damn, would Chi-Chi be excited to hear this shit. Where was Chi-Chi by the way? Bulma glanced around for her friends for half a second, but the tequila was setting in as her vision started to blur, and she lost interest after a quick twirl of her neck around the room.

“Maybe Vegeta wants a shot or two,” She said aloud, not really meaning to. 

“Nooo,” Nappa said forcefully. “Leave him be. He doesn’t party.”

“Why not?” Bulma asked with a hint of indignation as she watched a fifth, maybe sixth round of shots poured. Fuck she’d lost track.

“Free will?” Nappa said. “Not everyone’s as lush as you westerners.”

“Psh. Speak for yourself.” Bulma slid a fresh pour toward the large man’s fingers, hoping Nappa’s lips would loosen further with another drink.

“What had he been doing before you found him?” she asked.

“Never told me.”

“Did you ask?”

“Of course I asked! Kid doesn’t tell me nothing!” he whined. “Ask him yourself if you’re so damn curious.”

“So, why did he get kicked out of Icejin?” She changed the line of questioning.

“No idea,” Nappa shrugged. “I was here in this house when that happened. _If_ that’s what happened. I know he didn’t get along with any of them. Never did. They were bigger assholes than he was. A bunch of highrise money kids from the north side of town. Daddy funded their whole operation, purchased their success. Tour buses, fancy equipment, bankrolled their first record with a well-known producer before they ever got signed. Good musicians, don’t get me wrong, but it takes money to cut through the noise. And Kid helped, too. How many preteens do you see dolled up in warpaint shredding death metal riffs? My guess is that once Kid was old enough to dish their shit back at them and was no longer their baby mascot, he became more trouble than he worth. Lost value.”

“That’s why he was kicked out?”

“I said assumption,” Nappa pointed. “Don’t go spreading rumors.”

“Ugh, fine!” Bulma sneered. “Tell me this though, is he gay?”

Nappa slapped his hand to the counter and laughed heartily. “Damn Briefs, is that what this is actually all about? You’re just pissed because he’s playing hard to get?”

“No... I just... I mean,” Bulma felt her cheeks burn hot. “Whatever. Screw you guys!”

She swiped the tequila bottle from Raditz’s loose grip and stuck her tongue out at them, giving up on her half-assed interrogation to find her own friends.

“If you want my advice, I wouldn’t go near that grenade!” Nappa shouted to her back.

***

Chi-Chi stared into a half empty bottle of vodka with her cell phone pressed to her ear. It went to voicemail again.

“Where are you?” Chi-Chi slurred into the mouthpiece. “If you’re still hanging out with Yamcha, I am going to cut your hair off while you sleep, bake it into a cake and feed it to your cat. Hairballs for days. That is all.... ya bitch.”

She barely clapped her phone shut when a familiar chipped, red manicure set two rolls of money on the table in front of her.

“B!” Chi-Chi screamed as she leapt from the shoddy patio furniture to wrap her roommate in a sloppy hug. She felt Bulma’s own bottle of alcohol pressed into her back as she returned the embrace.

“Where the hell were you? Where’s Yamcha?” Chi-Chi glanced around, assuming Bulma somehow convinced the frat boy to escort her to the party.

“Jerk never answered his phone. Guess I’m still single and ready to mingle,” Bulma said dryly before she took a swig from the bottle in her hand and glanced around the second-story deck.

Chi-Chi had spent the last hour or two observing the horde of weirdos filing in and out of the house in their underwear. Admittedly, the more she drank, the more tolerable they all became. She’d even carried a semi-decent conversation about the environmental impacts of vegetarianism with some guy who had a long goatee that hung from his chin twisted into two dreadlocks like a pirate.

Goku and Krillin cleared a space near the deck railings, poised to spar, like they had back in high school on their martial arts team. Squatting in fighting stances, they stood feet apart, eyes locked. Goku was also in his boxers, which is why Chi-Chi was finding it difficult to give Bulma her full attention, keeping one eye on her own boyfriend’s well-toned abdomen.

“Goku, you’re partaking in this stupid party theme?” Bulma asked.

“No, he just thought his jeans were too tight to fight in,” Chi-Chi answered for him. “So, what’s the deal? Where’ve you been?”

Bulma’s eyes bulged from their sockets the way they always did when she had some juicy secret to dish.

“As a matter of fact, I was talking to our new friend out on the driveway,” Bulma said with a seductive grin and a wag of her blue brows.

“No, Bulma. _Why_?” Chi-Chi groaned.

“What do you mean why? _You’re_ the one that wanted to play detective!” Bulma said, a comment which earned Chi-Chi a suspicious glance from her boyfriend before he was distracted by Krillin’s attempted swing.

“I was just curious!” Chi-Chi brought her voice down to a low growl. “Making sure he wasn’t a psycho or something.” She punched Bulma in the shoulder, hoping to tip-off her stupid roommate to the fact that Goku wasn’t exactly aware of their research. “I wasn’t trying to vet him for _you_.”

“Well, then you should be happy to know that he’s not a psycho,” Bulma said with a defiant lift of her chin, rubbing her arm where Chi-Chi landed a hearty jab. “I think Goku’s right. He’s not mean; he’s just misunderstood.”

“Oh yeah? He called you a bitch on the ride here,” Chi-Chi informed her.

“He also said she was pretty,” Goku added as he blocked a punch to the gut.

Chi-Chi silently cursed her boyfriend, who was demonstrating now that his ability to multitask was an on-off switch, only never flipped in the direction she wanted.

“He said pretty bitch,” Krillin corrected the couple’s misdirection as he leapt in the air, aiming a kick at Goku’s head, only to be swatted to the ground like a fly.

Chi-Chi watched Bulma smiling dumbly at the word _pretty_ , twirling back and forth at the waist with the bottle of tequila hugged between her arms like she hadn’t heard the rest. Kami, the girl was hopeless.

Bulma’s life was a complete disaster of her own making. From the messy living standards to her messy relationships. For someone who came from ample wealth and opportunity, Chi-Chi had never known a person so confused about her future. She’d only met Bulma a year ago, but Chi-Chi thought of her as her best friend.

Chi-Chi grew up in a rural, retirement community far outside of West City near Mount Paozu, where there were few people her own age. Her high school graduating class was just fifteen strong, and her father, being both the town’s pastor and elected member of the city council, never let Chi-Chi roam too far from her bubble. It took a lot of convincing to even let her attend university in the city.

That was where she met Bulma in her English Lit class. Though the girl seemed far from the type Chi-Chi would associate with, it was that same dissonance between them that eventually drew Chi-Chi to her. Bulma’s quick wit, defiant attitude, and rocker style was intriguing, to the point where Chi-Chi found herself asking Bulma to study sessions, trading papers not because she was smart, but because she couldn’t peel her attention from the free-spirited weirdo. Nothing like Bulma existed in her small town, and they became fast friends in spite of their differences. 

Chi-Chi quickly learned that Bulma’s upbringing didn’t involve much discipline or direction. Her mom and dad were nice people, but they didn’t parent the way that Chi-Chi was accustomed. Bulma’s parents were rich, self-absorbed and absent, letting their daughter run amok for the most part. Sometimes she wondered if the Briefs knew how much they’d already spent on tuition. Honestly, even if they paid attention to the checks they signed over to the university, it was chump change to them as long as Bulma was happy—which meant, as long as Bulma was having a good time and showed up for Sunday brunch with a smile.

This, Chi-Chi believed, was why Bulma wallowed in between college majors, never committing to anything. She had all the brains and resources in the world to embark on any path she chose, but gun to her head, she wouldn’t _choose_. Instead, she took every class the university offered, assuming it would all fall into place... eventually.

Bulma was just as messy in her relationships. She was cheerful, confident—and yes, very pretty. But for the life of her, Chi-Chi couldn’t figure out why the girl subjected herself to these awful boyfriends. Yamcha made her miserable, yet she kept going back for more. And now, tonight, Chi-Chi saw the way Bulma looked at Vegeta. The asinine turd had her completely falling over herself.

“You deserve so much better than these guys! Please let me hook you up with someone decent!” Chi-Chi whined. “Someone motivating, maybe?”

“Motivating? I’m plenty motivated.” Bulma grinned into the tequila bottle clasped between her fingers. “But, I suppose I’m down for a date. Just depends on who.”

Yes, who? Chi-Chi thought about the men she’d met since moving to the city. “What about my yoga teacher? He’s nice!”

“Nice?” Bulma spat the word like it was a curse. “Namaste whatever, Cheech. I don’t even like yoga.”

“One date? And if you don’t like him, sue me.” Chi-Chi said. “If you’re going to be in a relationship it should be with someone decent, like Goku!”

At the emphatic shout of his name, Goku flicked his attention to the girls and missed Krillin’s hard kick to his chest. It flung him backward with enough force to bust through the weather-beaten railing of the second story deck. The sound of cracking wood and Goku’s yelp sent the party goers scrambling. They crowded around the remaining rails, gawking at the lawn ten feet below. Chi-Chi couldn’t get through if she wanted, had she bothered to get up. He was fine.

“I’m okay!” he called.

“You’re a fucking cat, Goku!” Bulma yelled down to him.

He’d landed on his feet. Goku grinned and made his way back up by leaping to catch the deck floor. He pulled himself back to the platform like it was nothing.

Chi-Chi watched her best friend drunkenly gawk at Goku’s prowess. She ignored her jealous instincts, believing that Bulma was simply considering the proposition. Bulma dating someone with Goku’s amiable personality would be easy! She certainly didn’t deserve her cheating boyfriend… ex-boyfriend, nor that self-absorbed, man-child in the driveway. No drama, no fuss, just unadulterated sweetness, and most importantly, no more third wheeling dates. Chi-Chi was sick of feeling like the third wheel herself. 

“Okay fine, Cheech,” Bulma sighed. “Do it! Set me up.”


	3. Wanna Hate You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first fanfic/multichapter thing I've done, so constructive comments are appreciated :) Hit me!
> 
> Thanks for the read through starboygoku... wherever you are :P

Vegeta leaned up against the van and lit another cigarette. The party around him had long since escalated to that point of no return; incoherent shouts burst over the music, beer cans were crushed in the driveway, and people spewed next to the house. It was 3:30am, and all he wanted to do was sleep, which wasn’t an option since the couch where he slept for the last month was in a living room full of drunks. He debated sleeping in the van, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. His bandmates didn’t exactly hold hygiene in the highest regard. The vehicle had the distinct smell of stale marijuana and sweaty t-shirts that had been left inside to rot. Instead, he resigned himself to sit on the bumper, slumped over his legs to wait it out.

“Hey you! Vegeta!” a feminine squeal rang from the yard.

Vegeta sat up. Raditz was mostly naked as he gave the blue-haired girl a piggyback ride around the side of the house. A bottle of tequila was clasped precariously in her hand as she pointed at him, the other arm strangled around Raditz’s neck. The girl dismounted poorly as Raditz tried to bend down and dumped her in the grass.

She was much drunker than before. Her denim jacket was missing and her shirt had come untied; the oversized _Megadeath_ tee covered her leather mini skirt, which made it appear that it was all she sported above her sneakers.

Stumbling back to her feet, the girl marched toward Vegeta. “I need a ride.”

“Good for you,” he scoffed, glancing distastefully at the way she swayed to maintain her footing.

“No, sssseriously!” The girl took another swig from the bottle and grabbed his arm to pull him up from the bumper. “Come on now. Raditz said you’re driving me home.”

Vegeta snapped his arm back. “Like hell I am,” he spat. That drunken fool could buy the woman a cab for all he cared.

At his rejection, the girl began to hop up and down in a practiced tantrum. “But, Vegeta!” Fake tears glossed her big blue eyes, and her bottom lip jutted out like a petulant child that was used to getting what she wanted.

Vegeta was no stranger to clingy fangirls, but this one was a different breed, like she believed she was Kami’s gift to the world. Her tears stopped as quickly as they’d arrived as she sat down next to him on the bumper and plucked the cigarette from between his lips, taking it for herself.

“Come on man,” Raditz groaned from where he had collapsed in the grass. “She’ll put out!”

The woman’s expression turned rabid as she leapt from the bumper to stomp back toward the fool, screeching at a high register as she kicked him in the gut. 

“Dammit Bulma!” Raditz gasped, trying to catch his wind. “I’m just trying to negotiate!”

Abandoning her hissy fit, the girl flicked her attention back to Vegeta and tried another tactic, her face of rage morphed on a dime, her lips peeling into a conniving grin. “I’ll pay you! I live fifteen minutes away. I have a guest room, a few of them actually, so you can sleep! It will take forever to get a cab at this hour. Please!”

The mention of money and a comfortable, quiet place to sleep made Vegeta perk up.

The girl’s watery, wide eyes gleamed from the lights over the garage. If anything, she was persistent and practiced in the art of getting her way, he’d credit her that.

“Fine. 100 Zeni,” he said. “Cash up front.”

The woman squealed, clapping her hands victoriously. She reached into her bag and tossed him a wad of keys, beckoning him to follow with a wag of her finger.

Vegeta realized he should have demanded more money once he saw the polished shine of her black Audi RS coup. Though inside, her fancy sports car was a mess. Schoolwork, clothes, and candy wrappers were strewn about, and a sticky film lined the steering wheel. 

“Stick shift,” he noted as the girl plopped in the passenger seat and squeezed the tequila bottle between her thighs.

“That a problem? You don’t know how to drive one?”

“Tch. Just tell me where to go,” Vegeta commanded, buckling in. The woman proceeded to direct him through the suburban streets.

He could feel her gaze on him as he drove, like she was trying to form a clever remark in her booze-addled brain to get his attention. From the moment he met her, the pretty little doll seemed intent on bending him to her will, as if every man she’s ever met has gone mad under the spell of her beautiful blue eyes, and she was confused and annoyed that he was immune to her siren song. If this was the woman’s game, she just met her match.

“You know, girls will like you more if you drop the broody, asshole act,” she stated, the corner of her mouth turned up in a sly smile as she unscrewed the cap of her bottle.

“No shit?” he said, his tone dipped in rancor. “And to think of all the wasted broads I’ve been missing out on.” He side-eyed her as she tore the bottle from her lips and stuck out her tongue in spite.

“I’ll have you know, I’m only twenty-one-years-old, and I already have degrees in mechanical engineering and computer science, both Suma Cum Laude,” she slurred her credentials. “I’m basically a genius. I’m allowed to let loose occasionally. Maybe you should try it.”

The woman jabbed him in the arm with her finger.

Vegeta snorted at her insinuation. “What, you think I’m some kami-fearing prig? Do you even know who I am?”

“Yeah, remember? You think that I googled you. Well, let me tell you something, Vegeta Ouji—I _did_ look you up, and according to the Internet, you’re nothing but a teenage has-been who grew out of the gimmick and got kicked out of his band,” she said with a cool toss of her hand.

The woman was clearly delusional. Who gave a shit about her college degrees? His was a name recognized by everyone in the industry. Regardless of whether his _teenage gimmick_ , as she called it, had given him a head start or not, he’d gotten further in his career at fifteen than most people could ever conceive in their lifetimes. All of them were too ordinary to be anything but lemmings, their puny ambitions leading to shitty jobs that they hated and kids they never wanted.

“You’re a pretentious cock tease, and I wasn’t kicked out. I quit.”

“I’m not a tease!” The girl seemed genuinely hurt as her playful tone went cold. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew who I was.” She abruptly widened her big eyes and grinned, as if she expected him to delight in her claim to self-importance.

“You’re assuming I care,” Vegeta said. “Just tell me where to drive.”

Unfortunately, the tequila seemed to be taking a toll on the woman’s ability to navigate. As she led them to dead ends and neighborhoods she didn’t recognize, Vegeta grew more and more irritated. The clock on the dash blinked 4am, and it seemed they were getting nowhere. The woman blathered on about herself in between her piss poor directions and taking pulls from her tequila bottle. Every now and then, she’d squeal when she recognized a landmark.

“How much longer?” Vegeta sighed as he watched the lines on the road blur. Trying to ignore the incessant chattering from the seat next to him—imbued with a handful of insults—was wearing on what remained of his paper-thin patience.

“Chill out, we’re close. Oh! Take a left up here!” she pointed at the next intersection. As Vegeta went to make the turn, the girl yelped and grabbed the steering wheel, attempting to whip the car in the opposite direction. Instead, the car jerked awkwardly back and forth before it stalled out in the middle of the road.

“What the hell, woman!?” he growled.

“I meant left! Er, I mean right!” she shook her head and smacked her palm to her forehead. “That way,” she gave up and pointed.

Vegeta angrily stomped the clutch, shifting to reverse vehicle toward the direction she had intended until he saw red lights flash and heard two quick sirens whoop from behind them.

“Fuck me. This is just perfect,” he sneered and pulled the car off to the side of the road as the cop car parked behind them. “Hide that bottle!” he commanded.

The girl bent to stash the bottle under her seat. “Geez, chill out. You’re sober, remember?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But I don’t exactly have a license.” He ran his palm down his face, weary from lack of sleep and the amount of undue stress the insufferable woman was putting him under.

“You what?” the girl giggled her surprise. “How do you not have a driver’s license? You’re like my age!”

“I don’t know! Subways, shitty parenting, take your pick!” 

Vegeta drummed on the sticky steering wheel, watching through the side mirror as a sluggish cop waddled toward the window. He rolled it down to greet the officer, a middle-aged man with reddish stubble covering his chin. The red-rimmed eyes that sat above the man’s broad nose suggested he would rather be doing anything on Kami’s green Earth besides interrogating two twenty-somethings on the road at 4am.

“License and registration,” the cop muttered. He scanned the two lazily while the woman opened the glovebox to retrieve her registration.

“Gummy bears!” she chimed, pulling a bag of candy from the compartment. “Officer, would you like a gummy bear?” She held the bag out along with her paperwork.

The cop sighed his disinterest.

“Or some tequila?” she quipped.

Vegeta snapped his head to her. Was the idiot trying to get them arrested? If his jaw was clenched any tighter, he’d be cracking teeth. 

“What?” she shrugged. “That was a joke ya party pooper.”

Ignoring her, the officer humorlessly turned to Vegeta and held out his pudgy fingers. 

Vegeta pretended to pat himself down, but then it dawned on him that even _if_ he had a driver’s license, he really was missing his wallet! Panic swept through him when he remembered that he’d given it to the trainwreck sitting next to him. He glanced around the garbage-strewn car, trying to reconcile the fact that he’d likely never see his phone or wallet ever again.

The officer cleared his throat impatiently.

At least he didn’t have to fake it, Vegeta thought, admitting to the cop with a straight face, “I seemed to have lost my wallet.”

The officer pressed his lips together and sighed through his bullish nose.

“Son, have you been drinking tonight?” the cop reached across him to hand the girl her license and paperwork.

“No officer! He’s straightedge!” Bulma smirked and formed an X with her pointer fingers. 

Not understanding the term, the cop grunted and opened the driver-side door. “Son, I’m going to need you to step out of the car.”

Vegeta groaned as he stood to face the officer who retrieved a breathalyzer from a holster on his belt.

They both ignored the woman as she swore on Vegeta’s behalf, “It was my fault. He doesn’t drink mister! _I’m_ drunk! I am very, _very drunk!_ ”

The cop held out the nozzle and instructed Vegeta to blow. As he took a breath and began to exhale into the tube, he felt something small whack him in the temple. At first, he thought it was a bug, but when he was struck again on his cheek with something red in color, Vegeta glanced up at the cop to see if he noticed the projectiles flying through the window of the car just as a gummy bear hit the officer square on his fat nose. Despite his annoyance with the woman, he couldn’t restrain the amused snort he blew into the breathalyzer.

“Okay, kids.” The cop ripped the tube away from Vegeta’s mouth, barely reading the result. He glared at the woman before pointing a finger between the two of them. “Just how far is it you have to go?” he sighed.

“A few miles I think,” Vegeta said.

“I’ll drive you there.” He radioed his partner to follow them as he flipped the driver’s seat forward to let Vegeta climb into the backseat.

Brushing a mess of garbage to the floor, Vegeta collapsed onto the bench with a sigh of relief. The officer squeezed into the tiny coup, adjusting the seat into Vegeta’s knees. The woman turned to snicker at him as she chucked another stale gummy bear at his mouth that just bounced off his lips into his lap.

The cop drove down the main highway where the woman had pointed, his partner following along behind in the squad car.

Though, after a minute of not hearing her own voice, the girl started to whine.

“I’m cold,” she said, rubbing her bare shoulders.

“You’re weak,” Vegeta replied. “What happened to your jacket?”

“I dunno,” she shrugged. “Can I have your sweatshirt?”

“Not until you find my wallet,” he said.

She turned around in the seat, her brows furrowed in a look of confusion before she shrugged and decided to roll with an obvious lie. “ _Psh_. Don’t worry. I have it!”

“Your boyfriend’s not much of a gentleman,” the cop interjected. “Back in my day—

“Yeah, we get it old timer,” Vegeta cut him off. “Chivalry is dead.”

He pulled his hoodie off and flung it at her head. Stupid woman whooped victoriously.

The girl managed to direct them into a picturesque neighborhood with landscaped lawns and long tree-lined driveways that lead to stately homes, each one bigger than the last. Vegeta stared out the window at the vast estates in disbelief. There was nothing like these structures in North City, a place too densely packed for such large, private venues. Instead, the richest among the northerners lived in penthouse condos at the top of skyscrapers. They didn’t own _land_.

Finally, the girl led them up a long driveway at the end of the block to a large, modern complex that looked more like an art museum than a home. Large silo-shaped structures surrounded the main building, a vast dome that curved over the property like crashed moon. 

Casting the woman quizzical look, the cop parked the car in front of the main house. “You’re license said Briefs, but I didn’t make the connection,” he said as he heaved himself out of the tiny vehicle. “You and your boyfriend ought to be more careful. West City press would have a field day over the Briefs’ kid getting arrested.”

The girl smiled slyly at Vegeta’s perplexed expression. “Thanks sir, I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

She bid the officer goodbye before they made their way to the front door. The woman was a few paces behind when Vegeta heard the smack of her palms against the pavement. The girl had tripped onto all fours. For a second, he relished the sound of her pain, but then a whine erupted from the girl’s throat at a pitch that grated his nerves.

“Come on, get up,” he demanded, turning to look at her, crossing his arms as she made a pitiful effort to stand. She collapsed again onto her seat, moaning as she brushed gravel from her skinned knees.

“I can’t,” she pouted and held out a foot. “I think I rolled my ankle.”

“You are a piece of work,” Vegeta growled.

He bent down to hook an arm under her knees and his other around her back, scooping her up, ignoring the chuckles from the officers’ car as they departed. Vegeta held her in range to open the front door and let them inside, feeling like he was stepping aboard the Starship Enterprise. 

The vast entry was dark, and he had to adjust his eyes to see the curved staircase where she pointed. As she clung to his neck and navigated them through her space-aged mansion she made jokes about him being her prince charming, openly mocking the sad state that she’d reduced him to.

Biting back his irritation, Vegeta continued to carry her upstairs through another long, curved hallway that ended at her bedroom. He nearly tripped over three pairs of shoes before his knees hit the edge of her bed where he dropped her, ignoring her yelp as she hit the mattress.

Exhausted, Vegeta pulled off his shoes and fumbled his way around the perimeter of her bed to lay down on the other side. Tracking down the promised guest room seemed like more work than he could manage at this hour in her massive home. He laid down on his back, forearm thrown over his eyes as he eagerly drifted towards a long-awaited sleep.

Until she started talking again.

“Do you want to make-out?”

“No!” Was she fucking serious?

“One kiss?” she chirped, turning her body to face him.

“Be quiet,” he said. Not that he didn’t find her objectively attractive—in fact, quite the opposite. She was painfully beautiful—he was just not interested in having his way with a drunk girl, no matter how much she insisted. Even sober, she would probably turn out to be the most annoying person he’d ever met.

“Come on, just one? Really, really, really quick. Then we can sleep.”

Vegeta didn’t respond. A minute or two of relished silence calmed him into a loopy half-sleep. He was nearly there, so close to forgetting where he was until a he felt a tiny hand rest against his chest and warm lips press softly against his. Vegeta glanced from under his arm as the girl lifted her head to look down at him in the dark.

“Are you satisfied now?”

“No!” she scoffed, her face still so close to his that he could smell the alcohol and feel her warm breath against his lips.

“That didn’t count. You didn’t kiss me back! You should at least try!” she cupped his chin in her hand and shook his face, berating what she believed his sexual appetite was lacking at dawn, in a strange, drunk girl’s parent’s home.

“Come on, Vegeta! It’s not like you don’t want to. I mean, I’m a catch!”

Vegeta groaned and kicked his legs. The woman had no off button. All he wanted was to sleep, but she just wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

“Most guys would beg to be in your position right now.” She pounded her puny fist against his sternum. “All alone in the dark with a beautiful girl like me.” She slowly traced her finger up from his chest, across his jawline and around his ear. Kami-damned bitch knew exactly what she was doing.

Vegeta scowled as he tried desperately to ignore the sensation of her fingers threading into his hair and her thumb massaging against his temple. 

“You’re such a prude,” she complained. “Have you even kissed a girl?”

“I hate you,” he said, which only earned him a sarcastic snort. Probably the first time she’s ever heard that; of course this girl would assume he was kidding.

“You know,” she said, dropping her forehead to his. “I think this whole misanthrope thing is just an act.”

“I want to sleep, woman!” he said. To be honest, he didn’t have a clue what she was accusing him of, whether he was or wasn’t what she said. He wasn’t acting, that’s for damned sure. He wondered if she was just trying to make him feel stupid. Fuck her and her college degrees.

He closed his eyes. The head massage wasn’t awful, if she would shut the hell up.

She did, for a split second, only she kissed him again, this time much less delicately. She pushed her lips against his with a desperate force, practically laying on top of him.

He tried his best to not react. She seemed to thrive on men’s reactions; at least, that was one thing he learned tonight. If he pretended that he was asleep, maybe she would deflate her damn ego and let him actually sleep.

She finally pulled away when his lips refused to participate.

“You know, if you’re more into men, you can just say so,” she said. “I’ll leave you alone.”

What the hell was she on about now?

“I’m not,” he assured her, though he wasn’t sure why. If he had pretended to swing the other way, maybe she would have let him be. He’d do anything to keep her from talking.

“Then what do you have to lose? One kiss!” 

“Leave me alone, woman!” Vegeta cried, kicking his legs again in a hissy fit.

“Not until you-” The girl tried to whine, but Vegeta had enough. He grabbed her by the back of her head, a handful of teal hair clenched in his fist. He pulled her mouth into his with a little more force than he intended, knocking their teeth together. She yelped into his lips, a squeal so hearty that it vibrated through him, alerting every nerve to stand along his jaw and behind his ears where she clenched her fingers in his hair.

For a second, he tore her head away and saw her eyes rounded in surprise, their wide blue hues staring down at him. She seemed to have traded her incessant chatter for utter confusion, yet she didn’t back away. Instead, her features softened, her lips curved into a smile as she hovered above him gleefully.

Before he fully understood what he was doing, Vegeta pressed himself upright to face her. His other hand began to slide up her thigh with a will of its own.

 _Stop! What the hell are you doing!?_ His mind called for him to retreat, to not give into her, yet he kept pushing his body closer, urging the girl to her back as he crawled on top of her until he was the one that hovered above her face. He brushed the long sweep of bangs away from her eye while his other hand crept further up the back of her thigh.

 _Dammit man, you can’t let her win!_ His conscious mind screamed at him, while his subconscious drove his mouth into hers again.

Without any hesitation, the girl wrapped her arms around his neck, and her fingers found hold in his hair, holding him down.

Her velvety lips parted, welcoming his tongue, the taste of tequila still strong on her breath. He didn’t so much care about the alcohol; his monkey brain liked the texture of her tongue twisting around his, her body craning into his hips as she held him against her by the back of his neck.

 _Abort!_ His mind screamed. Yet he couldn’t force his body to remove itself from her grasp, no matter how much his logic demanded.

His hand unwittingly slid further up her leg to grip her ass beneath her leather skirt as he pulled her hips into his. She let a soft moan into his mouth, and Vegeta felt his blood rush south.

 _Oh shit._ His body awoke below the belt, his dick betraying his self-control as it alerted to the temptress’s movements against him. Vegeta cursed his damn girl jeans for the lack of room where it was needed. They were too damn tight. There was too much friction! Kami-damned bitch.

Abruptly, he pushed himself off her, ignoring the wide-eyed look of awe to defeat that flashed across her features as he flipped over to face the windows, hoping that she hadn’t noticed his hard on.

After a minute as he regained most of his composure, he felt her slender arm wrap around his waist.

“No,” was all he managed to strangle out, but she ignored him anyway and scooted up against his back, burying her face in the nape of his neck. Her warm breath sent a shiver down his spine. He tried to remind himself that he didn’t want her, but he was too tired to protest his defeat, and reluctantly fell asleep in her small embrace.


	4. Get up, Get up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Danka [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) for beta reading :)

As the late morning sun cast its glare over her face, a pounding headache rose with it to beat against her temples. Her ankle ached and her knees stung. Throwing her forearm over her eyes and squeezing them shut, Bulma attempted to piece together the previous night. Her emotions began to stir in that, _Oh Kami, what embarrassing public display did I put on?_ kind of way. There were shots, lots of shots, and eventually a bottle.

She glanced under her arm to register her surroundings. The familiar green paint of her bedroom walls, her high school diploma, her band and movie posters all stared back at her as she tried to willfully pull her memory back into her skull.

Sitting up to take stock of her childhood bedroom, her stomach leapt in a flutter and heat flooded her cheeks when she noticed the boy sleeping next to her.

He lay on his stomach, fully clothed on top of the covers, his face resting on his arms. Pieces of the night came stumbling back to her head. Kissing! They kissed, and it was the most stupefying sensation she’d experienced to date, especially once he’d pinned her down and greedily pulled her hips into his, and she felt him against her thigh.

“You couldn’t fake that!” she whispered, as she lay back down to examine his sleeping form.

His eyelids fluttered in a dream.

She had never seen him in the daylight, and laid there for a long time analyzing him. His dark, coarse hair was a lot like Goku’s, but with hints of auburn in the sunlight. His complexion was darker than Goku too, which she didn’t expect for a northerner, where the climate is cold and grey. His arm, tucked under his head, had serious scars along his triceps and forearms, healed cuts of various sizes raised beneath his tattoos. The pattern seemed random enough that they had to have been caused by an accident of some sort.

Her phone buzzed from her bag. A text from Yamcha—well, three texts from Yamcha, two with apologies for bailing along with his belabored excuses. The latest, _Can I see you tonight?_ Fat chance. Bulma rolled her eyes as she shut her phone and turned back to face Vegeta. Even when he slept, his brows knit together. She reached out to press her finger between them to soften the raging asshole’s permanent scowl when a knock at her bedroom door had her lurching from her reverie.

“Bulma?” her mother’s voice rang from the hallway. “I saw your car outside and thought you might want some breakfast.”

Vegeta started to stir, inhaling deeply as he stretched his limbs before he exhaled back to sleep.

“Okay. Uh, I’ll be down in a minute.” She listened to her mother’s footsteps recede down the hallway before she placed a hand on Vegeta’s shoulder and gave him a light shake.

“Vegeta,” she whispered. “Unless you want to play twenty questions with my mother, you need to get up, like now!”

The boy’s lids popped open.

They crept downstairs toward the front hallway, pausing at the bottom of the staircase. The smell of cinnamon rolls and bacon wafted from the kitchen. Bulma could hear her mother humming along to the oldies on the radio, clanging dishes and shutting cupboards. She glanced to Vegeta. His dark eyes were wide and alert to her nod, and they tiptoed their way to the front door. She turned the handle soundlessly with a breath of relief. 

“Oh my gosh!” 

Bulma cringed. 

“Who is your friend?” Her mother practically sprinted down the hallway. She wiped her hands on her pink polka-dotted apron before she grabbed Vegeta by the shoulders, looking him up and down. “Aren’t you handsome!? And trendy too!” 

Vegeta let out a noise, somewhere between a pained grunt and a laugh, as he spun his head toward Bulma, eyes pleading like a trapped animal. 

“Mom, this is Vegeta who is really busy and needs to get going, so I’m going to drive him home quick, and I’ll be right back,” she sputtered in a single breath.

“Vegeta! I’m Panchy!” She shook him by the shoulders like it was a proper handshake. “You must stay for brunch! I can’t send you home without a meal.”

Bulma tried to protest, but her mother had already linked her arm with his and led him toward the kitchen. She could only mouth “I’m sorry!” when Vegeta looked back to her with the same terrified expression.

Her father, sitting at the kitchen table with her cat Scratch asleep on his shoulders, didn’t look up from his newspaper as her mother pulled out a chair for Vegeta.

“Honey, sit down.” 

Despite her mortification, Bulma smiled inwardly at her mother’s endearment toward the black dressed rocker with his tattoos and piercings. Her parents really were the most open and laid back people in the world, besides maybe Goku.

“I hope you’re hungry,” her mother said setting a plate in front of each of them.

Vegeta looked as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks, staring wide-eyed at the steaming dish of cinnamon rolls, bacon, and eggs. Bulma gave him half a smile while her mom poured them coffee. She took a long sip before she looked down at her own food, her stomach twisting in protest as remnants of tequila threatened to rise from her throat.

 _Here it comes_... Bulma sighed inwardly as her mother sat down and looked between the two, smiling like a psycho.

“So... How did you two meet?” Panchy set her round eyes and intense grin on Vegeta, who was thankfully more focused on shoving bacon into his mouth.

“Um, he’s Goku’s friend, mom,” Bulma replied.

Vegeta scowled at her, his lips coated in grease.

“Well, I mean, he’s in Goku’s band. He’s the new guitar player,” she corrected, returning his frown.

“Oh, you’re a musician! And with Goku! You’ll have to invite us to one of your concerts,” she grinned excitedly.

Bulma’s mother had a soft spot for the boys, probably because she didn’t have any of her own. She fawned over them all, asked about them every time Bulma visited, wondering when Goku or Yamcha, and likely now Vegeta, were coming over for dinner. She expressed her feelings freely, something Bulma loved about her mother, but also something that embarrassed her to no end.

Bulma sipped on her coffee like an oxygen mask, clinging to life as her mom continued to hammer Vegeta with questions, which he answered with short, vague responses and sarcastic quips between bites, all of which went over her mother’s head.

“What do all these tattoos mean? Are these planets?” she asked. Bulma wanted to crawl into a hole and die watching her mother run a finger over his bicep. Thankfully, Vegeta was too busy eating that he didn’t bat her mother’s hand away.

“It’s from a video game,” he said, looking down at his own arm. “The red one’s a planet. The rest are suns and moons.”

“Oh, how interesting! Now, what’s that one?” she pointed to his wrist.

“Sort of a family crest,” he said.

The newspaper crinkled, and Dr. Briefs peered over the top of it at the boy.

“You’re Saiyan too!” he said, a little too loudly, startling their guest.

Panchy’s brows knit in puzzlement. “What’s a Saiyan?”

“It’s a people, dear. Technically, Saiya _was_ a country. Where the Son boys were from. Tuffles now I suppose.” Dr. Briefs smiled sweetly at his wife as he folded his newspaper and began his own line of questioning for Vegeta, who was probably cursing Bulma’s existence.

“What generation are you?” Dr. Briefs asked. Vegeta squinted in confusion. “I mean were you born here or there?” her father explained.

“In Plant, the capital,” he said.

“Are you a refugee from the war?”

“Was. I’m a citizen now.”

“How wonderful!” Dr. Briefs set his paper aside to clap his hands together, like he just made a discovery. “That crest... is your lineage really a part of the monarchy?”

Vegeta glanced at his wrist and nodded again.

“Fascinating! And to think, if your people had won the Saiya-Tuffle War fifteen years ago, you could have been a prince right now. Maybe even a king!”

“A king! Wow!” Bulma’s mother grew animated as she studied Vegeta up and down.

Vegeta snorted sarcastically and lifted a brow. By now, he was likely calculating how much more cash he deserved than their original deal.

Her father said something to him in a coarse, foreign language, to which the boy somewhat smiled before he quipped back a word or short phrase, she couldn’t be sure. Vegeta’s softened features, and the fact that Bulma didn’t even know her father spoke Saiygo had her looking between the two like she’d been left out of a joke. She was annoyed that the boy was somehow bonding with her father and not her. Stupid, really. She was glad for him, deep down.

“Honey, aren’t you hungry?” her mother interrupted, ignoring the foreign exchange. “You two probably worked up quite an appetite last night!” She grinned coyly and winked at Vegeta.

Bulma choked on the gulp of coffee that had been sliding down her throat, spewing it across the table and scaring the cat from its perch on her dad’s shoulders.

“Mom!” She cried and clapped her hands to her face, feeling her cheeks burn hot with embarrassment.

Her mother laughed and waved a hand. “Oh, come on dear, you’re an adult,” she said as she stood to clear their plates.

Bulma peered at Vegeta through her fingers. His expression was twisted in disgust, as if the very idea of sleeping with her appalled him.

“Oh, please Vegeta! I know for a _fact_ that you were into it,” Bulma sneered under her breath, not loud enough for Dr. Briefs to hear. She was happy to see Vegeta’s own cheeks flush pink.

After brunch, they both moved to escape to Bulma’s car, but not before her mother wrapped Vegeta a long hug and deposited a motherly kiss on his cheek, inviting him to come back anytime. It shocked Bulma that he reluctantly hugged her mother back. 

*** 

Vegeta handed the girl a bag of gummy bears as he climbed in the passenger seat. She grimaced as the candy seem to jog something in her memory.

“Sorry about this whole thing,” she said as she threw the candy into the backseat. “I didn’t mean to get so drunk. And my parents... They were never very good with boundaries.”

“Runs in the family,” he said, earning a derisive snort from the girl as she struggled to untangle her wad of keys.

It didn’t matter, he thought. Her parents were strange, but tolerable enough. 

“What do they do?” he asked, observing the giant house as she backed the car down the long driveway.

“My dad created Capsule Corp,” she said, like he was supposed to know what that was. When he shook his head, she gaped at him in shock.

“You don’t know Capsule Corp? Man, you really are an alien. Never heard of Capsule Corp., don’t have driver’s license, never kissed a girl.” She cast him a teasing smile.

“Very funny,” he sneered and turned to the window, no longer caring for her answer. She droned on anyway. The woman was incapable of silence. Even with the hangover she was undoubtedly suffering from, she insisted on blathering on and on.

“It’s an aerospace company. We design planes and jets and space shuttles,” she explained. “Have you ever flown on a plane?”

The innocence with which she asked the question was insulting, like she thought he was a dumb primate that couldn’t comprehend a modern world.

“Of course, I’ve flown on a plane!” he snapped. He’d probably been to more places with Icejin in a single year than she’d visited in her entire, spoiled little life.

“It was a valid question!” she whined defensively. “It’s just with your upbringing...” she paused a beat.

His upbringing? What was that supposed to mean? She must be unworldly, probably grew up in this stupid city and only left for extravagant vacations to ski in the mountains and sip hot cocoa from the chalet hot tub.

“You do realize the rest of the world isn’t primitive? And even if it was, I grew up in _this_ country. I moved here when I was five,” he informed her. “On a _plane_.”

“I didn’t mean because you weren’t born here! I just meant because of your parents is all.” Her voice dipped and she got that sad, sentimental look on her face, the look everyone gave him, eventually.

Vegeta felt that familiar disgusting squeeze, the feeling that always gripped his chest when other people brought up that couple he was supposed to care about but never really knew, that thing everyone spoke about around him with their brows dipped and the corners of their lips turned down in pity. What the hell did she know of his childhood?

“Nappa?” he guessed. “Fucking fat-ass windbag.”

Nappa always liked to play the hero. This wasn’t the first time his pseudo-guardian blabbed Vegeta’s backstory for a pat on the back, got all sappy and gushy to make people believe he was some kami-damned savior that rescued him from the depths of Hell.

Not that Vegeta really cared that people knew he grew up in the system. He just hated that they always acted as if the fact somehow made him incomplete, like he was missing something necessary and would forever be marred, would never be able to reach his full potential. Or worse, they pitied him, as if he suffered a terminal illness. He wasn’t ill. There weren’t any missing pieces to his life to prevent him from being successful. Even if nobody else believed him, he would prove it. In some ways, he already had. This girl was just as dense as the rest of them.

“He didn’t mean to. I egged him on.” The girl defended the dumb ox and his big mouth. 

“Well, you sure have a knack for getting men do what you want, don’t you?” he said with every intention to insult the woman.

“Excuse me?” Bulma scoffed. “Are you implying that I’m a slut, because if so, you’re dead wrong. I’m-

“Yeah, heard it last night. You’re a genius, suma cum whatever. Kami’s gift to humanity.” He waved a hand at her gaping mouth.

“Oh please. I’m surprised your ego could fit through the door.” She paused waiting for his retort. “Vegeta?”

He didn’t entertain her with a response. After all, it’s what she wanted, and he wasn’t going to fall for it this time. Instead, Vegeta stared out the window despondently, watching the palm trees trace the windows as they passed.

“You’re seriously not going to talk to me? What are you even mad about?” The pretty bitch screeched on, kicking it up a pitch with every question. “Why are you ignoring me!?”

He was starting to feel his pulse beat in his temples. If it went on any longer, he might lose this match. Thankfully, the ride was much faster in the light of day.

Pulling up to the house, he saw Kakarot picking up empty beer cans from the lawn, while Raditz slept on the front porch in his underwear.

Vegeta opened the door before the car had fully come to a stop. A heavy sigh escaped his throat as his feet hit the pavement and led him up the drive, away from the shrill woman toward his victory. His mind was already on a decent nap, probably in the peace and quiet of Kakarot’s room since the clown was busy out here.

“Vegeta, wait!” She wanted to say something to him that would evoke a real, human response.

She didn’t know what she needed tell him, or what she needed him to say back, but she needed _something_. Hell, they’d nearly been in a car accident, nearly arrested, both her fault, admittedly. Then had the most delicious kiss she’d ever experienced in her life, and fell asleep together, and had breakfast with her parents. _Give me something!_ she screamed inside. But Vegeta just walked up the driveway without a glance back, kicking Raditz in the gut before he disappeared into the house.

Bulma unbuckled from her seat, at first intending to follow him, but could only stand there in the driveway watching him leave.

When Bulma finally noticed that Goku was staring at her from the lawn, she slowly made her way over to her friend.

“Please tell me you have painkillers.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest.

Goku hugged her back and left a kiss on the top of her head.

Maybe she was just being stupid and sentimental. Maybe it was a simple infatuation, an obsession with this strange boy that she would get over once the next obsession came around. Or as ChiChi called them, a cycle of self-destructive distractions that she sought to avoid making responsible life decisions.

Then again, maybe not. There was a person hidden in there somewhere. In the fractional seconds between the stormy looks and sharp-tongued retorts, she was sure she’d seen glimpses of him. She only had to figure out how to break through.


	5. Literate and Stylish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) for beta reading :)

Vegeta spent the next week with the guys getting ready for the grand opening of Nappa’s latest music shop off University Avenue—a venue so close to the West City campus that the man’s brilliant marketing ploy was to throw a big party with free beer.

Vegeta didn’t mind the manual labor. Installing hooks along the walls, cleaning and stringing new guitars, and wiring amps and pedals was almost therapeutic. However, spending twenty-four hours a day with the store’s employees, consisting of Nappa, Turles, Raditz, Kakarot and the midget, was becoming more unbearable by the minute.

Never mind being angry with Nappa for his loose lips around that woman, Vegeta quickly figured out that Raditz was also privy to the tale. The moron acted uncharacteristically nice. His unsolicited pats on the back everytime Vegeta got annoyed with his roommate’s disgusting habits and lost his temper only made him angrier. If the dumbass claimed one more time _it’s okay buddy, we’re the same, you and me!_ , Vegeta was going to smash his face with nearest instrument.

The only people he could barely tolerate were Kakarot and his midget friend. At least those nerds were interested in progressing the band, having found them a studio and engineer to record their first LP as soon as next month. Despite not having enough songs yet to fill a full length record, they still received Piccolo’s approval on the budget. Once the contracts were signed by all the parties, Piccolo would wire Kakarot the funds, and they’d be on their way to the studio.

“I interned for Master Roshi last summer,” Kakarot beamed one night after practice. “His studio is out on the islands!”

Miles off the coast of West City, the Kame Islands, as Kakarot explained, were mostly home to tourists and beach bums. Being autumn, tourist season had just about passed, and the islands would be a quiet change from the city.

Despite the good news, Vegeta left practice that night in a huff, opting to skateboard ten miles home to the suburbs rather than ride back with Raditz and Nappa.

Since joining the band, practice put him in the worst mood—mostly due to Raditz, who was half in the bag and fiddling with his guitar, stopping and starting through every song with his amp cranked to the max. The idiot had no focus. This, combined with Nappa’s passive aggressiveness and Kakarot’s constant attempts to appease everyone, had Vegeta wanting nothing more than to kill them all and become a solo artist. Taming his temper sometimes felt like trying to catch a bottle rocket that was already shrieking through the air, ready to pop. 

The only solace he found that night was when Kakarot’s naggy girlfriend picked him up from practice, which meant Vegeta could shut himself in Kakarot’s empty bedroom, avoid Raditz’s inevitable loud, drunken progression in the main rooms of their house and sleep in a real bed. 

As Vegeta laid on Kakarot’s bed, he scanned the martial arts trophies and the framed photos that lined the top of the dresser. The clown had a lot of friends. In every frame, his dopey mug was surrounded by smiling faces. Each image depicted the normal childhood experiences people talked about as being necessary to life: birthdays, holidays, proms and graduations.

He’d acknowledged the pictures before, but for some reason he found himself getting out of bed to examine each one. Over half of them were images with the blue-haired girl. He picked up an old photo of Kakarot and her as children sitting on a white motorbike, her at the front handles, hair tied up in big red bow, while Kakarot, over a foot shorter at the time, gripped the back of her pink dress.

Resentment was a feeling with which Vegeta was all too accustomed; it seized him now as he stared at the picture held within the small wooden frame and all the other moments that added up to Kakarot’s merry existence, each one mocking him at the edge of his vision.

Vegeta chucked the picture across the room, listening to the wood split and the glass shatter as it hit the wall. Still, it didn’t lessen his anxiety. If he was still in North City without Nappa’s supervision, he’d already be on the subway, tracking down one of a dozen contacts to bust a rail over his five month streak of sobriety. That thought didn’t sit well. Vegeta laid awake all night, wading off another panic attack, trying to slow the pace of his heartbeat and deepen his shallow breaths. At one point, he considered going upstairs to sleep in Nappa’s room, but he refused to give him the satisfaction of playing caretaker.

By the time Friday’s grand opening rolled around, Vegeta was at wit’s end. The only thing to look forward to that provided him some semblance of self-control was the upcoming recording session.

Then there was the girl. Somewhere deep down that he couldn’t admit, he was hoping for the opportunity to see her. He thought about her more than he would like to admit. As much as he wanted to banish her from his mind, she’d appear uninvited like a gimmicky song.

His feelings for her were hard to place; they weren’t the simple sexual sort he was used to with previous girls. Lately he’d awoken to dreams of her that he couldn’t remember, but which left him feeling restless. He tried to recall all her annoying traits to calm his growing angst, but it seemed fruitless, knowing that he would see her all too soon.

***

The grand opening party was just popping off as people trickled into the shop, and plastic cups of cheap beer were passed around the various rooms. Bulma leered at Vegeta out of the corner of her eye. He stood at the top of a ladder, installing the hydraulics on the acoustic room doors. With his arms outstretched like that, the hem of his button-up lifted above his belt line, offering her a peek of his lower abdomen.

She laughed to herself noticing that her pleated mini skirt nearly matched the red plaid pattern of his shirt. Her black leather cuff with silver spikes even matched his belt. She couldn’t help herself. As he climbed down the ladder, she stalked up behind him.

“I got dressed first,” she teased.

Vegeta whipped around and scanned her. She forgot how intense his eyes were and blushed as they raked her up and down. This time, it wasn’t his rage she saw behind them. Without the sharp glare he usually shot her way, he looked as if he’d been hoping to see her. But then his gaze floated behind her, over her shoulder, as Bulma felt a warm hand on her back and a kiss on her head. She nearly cursed Raditz’s name, always the flirtatious drinker, as she whipped around, but instead her voice stuttered when she saw the admiring face of her recently dumped boyfriend.

“Ya-amcha, what are you doing here?” she asked. He looked out of place in his baseball uniform. The tan dirt on his knees suggested that he’d come straight from a game to find her, not even stopping at the locker room to change.

He smiled down affectionately. “You invited me weeks ago. Remember?”

Shit, she had. But that was before their most recent breakup.

She’d been ignoring Yamcha all week, his unanswered texts and voicemails growing more desperate every day. They’d done this half-assed split so many times before, he probably assumed that if he saw her, Bulma would be ready to jump back in where they’d left off.

If Vegeta had done anything for her last weekend, he made her realize that she wasn’t attracted to Yamcha anymore. In fact, his hand on her back made her cringe, as if overnight he’d become akin to a sibling.

They were officially and forever done romantically, which Yamcha wouldn’t be happy about once the information penetrated his thick skull. Still, it was hard to blame him for not taking a hint. Through years of dating and planning their future together, marriage and children, the whole gambit had been discussed. Kami, the thought of that now made her nauseous.

Vegeta pressed his finger to the drill trigger a few times for attention.

Scrunching her nose as Yamcha introduced himself and extended a hand, Bulma prayed that Vegeta would be cool, but the boy’s behavior was unpredictable as a wildfire.

“Don’t tell me, ice-something,” Yamcha pinched the bridge of his nose trying to recall the name of Vegeta’s former band.

“Icejin,” Bulma answered when it was clear that Yamcha couldn’t remember, and Vegeta chose to glower at the poor guy instead of help him.

“That’s it!” Yamcha snapped his fingers. “Sorry man, I’m more of a country music fan myself.”

“Shocking.” Vegeta’s gravelly voice dripped in sarcasm, though Yamcha didn’t seem to notice. He continued to feed the egotistical maniac compliments.

“Metal is cool though. I hear you were some kind of teenage star,” Yamcha said. “Bulma and Chi-Chi talk a lot about you.”

Vegeta flicked his chin toward Bulma. A spark lit in his eyes, and a gleeful smile spread across his face.

Dammit, Yamcha! Of all the things to say, you had to go and tell him _that_!

“Oh, I’ve noticed. Blue is _quite_ a fan,” Vegeta said smoothly. He crossed his arms and trapped her under his cocky gaze.

Yamcha looked between them. His brows bent quizzically for a moment as he tried to decipher the meaning of their exchange before he swung a protective arm around Bulma’s shoulders.

There was no ignoring Yamcha now. She had to come clean.

“Can I talk to you?” Bulma looked up at her ex, who had shifted his weight to stand tall, clearing his throat as he gripped her shoulder and observed the gloating Saiyan. “Yamcha! Talk? Outside?”

As the grand opening party raged on, the shop seemed too small to contain all the people that continued to pour in. Raditz was already unloading an extra keg from his van as Bulma and Yamcha continued to argue on the sidewalk. A long night of talking in circles, that’s how breakups with Yamcha typically went. They’d repeat the same arguments, make the same promises, and eventually close the loop by getting back together. Like an overplayed record, every reunion became just a bit duller than the last. Well, not this time.

“What do you mean, you’re serious this time?” Yamcha asked.

Bulma shifted her weight, blowing smoke toward the ground as she stared at the dingy white tips of her shoes. “I mean we’re not getting back together again, _ever_ ,” she added for emphasis.

“We need to move on. I... well... I already have.” She glanced back up at the tall boy under her lids, his expression shifting from confusion to anger.

“Let me guess: Goku?” he snapped, his eyes flicked toward the shop’s glass windows before they met hers again. The anger behind them palpable.

“I know you and Goku are _best friends_.” He threw air quotes around the term. “Believe me, I’ve always been man enough to let you know that I think your relationship is suspect,” Yamcha said.

It was true that Yamcha had always been intimidated by Goku and made her aware of his distrust on multiple occasions. Throughout their long relationship, Goku had been a topic of animosity between them, the fuel behind many of their breakups.

Yamcha believed that Bulma and Goku were destined to be together, and like some self-fulfilling prophecy, he wouldn’t be happy until he was proven right, which in the end, would make him miserable.

Sure, she’d admit that she and Goku were close, and it could sometimes make people uncomfortable. Chi-Chi was put-off at first too, but she got over it quickly. There wasn’t a kernel of truth behind the accusations, but unlike Chi-Chi, Yamcha couldn’t let it go. Even after Bulma had introduced Goku to his current girlfriend, Yamcha still believed there was some unsung love between him and Bulma that would make itself known in time.

“Give it a rest, Yamcha! For the hundredth time, me and Goku are not, nor will we ever be, a thing! He’s basically my brother!” she shouted at him, exasperated that the dolt wouldn’t listen. He never listened. He got an idea in his head, and he ran with it to the point of insanity.

“Then it’s the metal dude,” Yamcha concluded pointing toward the store where they had been talking with Vegeta. “He was practically eye-fucking you. Don’t deny it.”

She averted her gaze. Not that she had anything to be ashamed of, since they’d technically broken up. If she wanted eye-for-an-eye justice with her ex-boyfriend, she should have done much more than kiss Vegeta. But at the same time, hurting him ripped her apart inside. Especially knowing that had Vegeta let her, she would have fucked him, no question.

“Ok fine,” she said quietly to the pavement. “We sort of made out.”

There, it was out. When she found the courage to look up, Yamcha’s face had fallen into a pained twist, wrenching her heart. 

“I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have ignored you all week, but we aren’t technically together, and I didn’t see the point in hurting you.”

“I don’t get it.” Yamcha stepped away from her and dropped his gaze to the curb. He hugged his arms to his chest, his shoulders shrugged nearly up to his ears. “I know we broke up, but you said that guy was an asshole. Why do you want to be with someone like that?”

“First, I never said that. Chi-Chi did. Second, I’m not _with_ anyone! It was a one-time, drunken thing, and I doubt anything will come of it.”

She didn’t know why she felt the need to explain herself to her ex. It wasn’t Yamcha’s business anymore. Maybe it was just that after six years, she felt that she owed him something. Maybe it was the contorted look on his face, like she just killed his puppy. Though, more likely it was that she was admitting to herself the thoughts she’d been entertaining all week: that from the moment he stepped out of her car, Vegeta never left her head. Like some adolescent crush, she couldn’t bring herself to focus on anything else. Her class notes might have well been doodles of his name plus hers in hearts as college lectures floated unacknowledged over her daydreams.

“Can we just make a clean start, as friends?”

Yamcha shook his head, his face scrunched in distaste. “A little late for that, Bulma. Friends isn’t something I see happening anytime soon.”

Just like that, he was walking away. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t relieved, that after all these years she was finally free of a toxic relationship that she’d never been brave enough to quit. If she’d done it sooner, perhaps they could have made a friendship work. In time, she was sure it could once he got over her, as conceited as that seemed.

When she found her friends back inside, so many people were packed into the store that they all stood shoulder to shoulder. Bulma had to push past the crowd to get to Goku and Chi-Chi, who were chatting with Nappa near the drum room.

From the concerned looks on their faces, it was clear that the couple noticed the argument happening out front. Bulma ignored them, planting a smile on her lips and doing her best to stomp down the odd mix of emotions and contribute to the celebratory atmosphere. Her friends would be filled-in eventually.

“Nappa, how did you find so many people for the opening?” Bulma asked. “This place is packed!”

Nappa snickered, “Besides the announcement at the show last week and Chi-Chi’s campus flyers, I had Vegeta post about it on his MySpace.”

“Popular guy,” Chi-Chi said dryly.

No sooner did Nappa say his name when two metalhead, platinum blonde chicks clamored over; one with full sleeves of tattoos and a septum piercing grabbed Nappa by the arm.

“Nappa, I thought Vegeta was going to be here?” she squealed. 

“He’s around,” he told the pretty girl, looking around the room. “He’ll be out shortly.”

Nappa leaned into Goku and Chi-Chi. “You two do me a favor, and tell that punk to come mingle. He’s technically on the clock. He’s probably out back burning heaters,” Nappa said, tipping his chin toward the exit.

“I’ll do it!” Bulma said, and before anyone could respond, she began to push and shove her way to the front door. Let’s face it, putting on a party face was no longer in the cards. All she wanted now was to feed her growing addiction. She practically ran as she circled back behind the building, but not seeing Vegeta in the alleyway, she approached the back door to the office. It was partially cracked, light leaking out from the seam.

He was... _singing!_

Vegeta sat on the table in the middle of the back room, strumming on an acoustic guitar. He was singing! His voice was gravelly and raw, yet perfectly in tune from years of practice. She stood at the edge of the door listening to his sultry voice, knowing him well enough now that she didn’t dare make her presence known if she wanted to hear the rest of the song.

It was one of the tunes she recognized from the concert, only it took on a completely different quality with him singing alone to an acoustic guitar, rather than Raditz and his sloppy articulation and whiny tones covered up by the full band. Vegeta’s rendition was sweet and melancholy, full of the feelings he seemed to hide away from people with his arrogant, public front. Creeping on him through the crack in the door, Bulma felt like she was the unwitting witness to the real Vegeta. It was hard to swallow, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from squealing. He would die if he knew that she was watching him and thinking that this was the most emo fucking thing she’d ever seen. 

She waited until he stopped and set the guitar aside to jot in a notebook before she ventured into room.

“Heya party pooper,” she said, with as much sweetness as possible to not set him off.

Vegeta nearly jumped from his skin and dropped his notebook to the floor with a splat. “Fuck woman! Don’t you knock? How did you get in here?”

“You left the door open, dummy,” Bulma said. “Nappa’s looking for you. Your fans await.” Bulma rolled her eyes and hopped up next to him on the table.

“Screw him. I agreed to post the event flyer on my profile. I never agreed to hang around IRL.”

“I don’t blame you.” Bulma leaned into his shoulder and snickered. “Your fans are kinda slutty.”

He snorted a laugh but flinched when she laid her head to rest on his arm. His body stiffened as if her touch turned him to stone, but he didn’t shrug her off.

“Well, your boyfriend’s a tool,” he said.

“ _Ex_ -boyfriend,” She corrected.

As she tipped her head up from where she rested on his shoulder, his black eyes met her own, and for the first time he looked at her with something akin to camaraderie. She didn’t want to push her luck, and offered him a partial smile. One side of his lips turned up for a split second before he broke eye contact and stared at the wall. Bulma stilled and stared off in the same direction in silence.

Vegeta was a weird person. At one moment, he was cocky and mean, the next shy and dispirited. Despite meeting him a week ago, she sensed that he almost never let down his guard. Unlike Goku, whose simple soul was laid bare for all to see, Vegeta covered his in thick, protective layers. Clearly, he trusted no one, not even Nappa. The fact that he seemed to be warming up to her made her heart beat so hard against her chest, she swore it was audible. 

When she couldn’t take it anymore, sitting in awkward silence, she pulled his long-lost phone and wallet from her bag.

“I’m keeping the hoodie,” she said, dropping the other items in his lap. “I don’t know how you live without a phone for a week.”

He flipped open the device and turned it on. As the thing buzzed incessantly gathering a week’s worth of missed texts, he dropped it back in her hands.

“That’s how,” he said. Bulma watched the incoming messages light-up the small screen, all from a number saved as _Dumbass_ with the intermittent message from _Fat fuck_.

Bulma laughed once she realized that the majority were from Goku, who started every text like an email. _Hi Vegeta, do you need a ride to practice? Hi Vegeta, I’m hungry. Wanna Eat? Hi Vegeta, did you break one of my pictures? Hi Vegeta, are you mad at me or somethin?_

Kami, Goku was endearing to no end. He wasn’t playing devil’s advocate when it came to Vegeta. He really wanted to be friends, and it spoke volumes to Goku’s character that he wasn’t giving up on the malcontented jerk. Undeterred, he kept trying to get Vegeta to befriend him.

As they both snickered at Goku’s attempts to win him over, Vegeta tipped his head closer to where hers rested on his shoulder. She was surprised that he was letting her scroll through his texts. Even if ninety-percent of his messages were from Goku, Vegeta didn’t seem like the type to hand over his personal communications for someone to sift through. She wondered how many people he’d given this level of trust to before.

His head was bent so close they were nearly resting on one another. The centimeter of air between them buzzed, trading cells across the gap. She tipped her face up to him again, about to speak, but before she could open her mouth, he slipped his hand across her cheek and kissed her. It happened so fast, it took a second for her brain to catch up and crush the urge to squeal. 

He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, urging them apart. The cold metal of his lip ring pressed against her skin, and the toasted flavor of Am-Spi’s lingered between their shared breaths. Every roll of his tongue against her own brought Bulma to pull him closer, tugging at the collar of his shirt. Without breaking contact, Vegeta slipped off the table and maneuvered himself between her legs. He grabbed her from behind, pulling her hips toward his as he guided her body down against the table.

Bulma wrapped her hands around his head with as much force, crushing his face to hers, uncaring that her kiss grew sloppy, needy. She balked into him, feeling his dick against the crease of her hip beneath his jeans. Not so shy this time around. She couldn’t help but wonder what changed. What stopped him the first time? 

Vegeta squeezed his hand on her bare thigh before he dragged the tips of his fingers up the inseam beneath her skirt. Feather light, his fingernails made her squirm like they were livewires as they traced along her skin, up and up until he settled his thumb over the center of her lacey boy shorts. A gasp popped from between her lips as he pressed to circle his finger over the thin fabric. Shit, was he really going to do this here in the office? There were fifty people on the other side of the door. Bulma grew self-conscious as his lips left hers to trail down down her neck. Sensing his destination, a place where a boy’s lips had never ventured before, Bulma pulled his head up from her chest by his hair to make him look at her.

“Wait! Let’s go to my apartment.”

“You have an apartment?” Vegeta raised an eyebrow. “Do you bring all the guys home to your parents first?”

“Ha. Your house is closer to my parents.” Bulma stuck out her tongue “My apartment is only a mile from here.” Bulma grinned as he continued to rub his thumb beneath her skirt.

Someone pounded loudly on the door that separated the back office from the shop, causing them both jolt upright.

“Okay Kid, time’s up!” Nappa’s voice sounded from the other side, the door handle rattling as he unlocked it.

His immovable figure stood inside the frame as he scoured the two, a little surprised to see them dressed so alike and making-out in the back like it was scenester prom night.

“Dammit Briefs!”

Vegeta had been extra sour all week, which Nappa assumed had something to do with Briefs since the boy had stormed into the house in rage mode after spending the night at hers, and he hadn’t cooled off since.

Nappa wondered what the hell she had done to him, but he would have to wait to ask Briefs. He’d never glean the truth from Vegeta. Kid never confided in him, nor anyone else.

Whatever was going on in his head, Nappa was feeling less than sympathetic, since Vegeta was making him look bad on the night of his grand opening, and after everything he’d done for the brat. Nearly half of the people that showed-up were here to meet _him_.

“Let’s go. Time to meet and greet.” He nodded toward the shop.

Vegeta straightened his posture defiantly. “I never agreed to that,” he said with a flippant shake of his head.

“It was implied.” Nappa scowled at his former charge. This damned kid would be the death of him. He’d stolen so much of Nappa’s time and energy that he laid in bed some nights calculating just how many years Vegeta had likely cut from his timeline. At least one for every year he’d known the fucker.

“Don’t make me drag you inside.”

“Try me, fat ass,” Vegeta spat, his attitude arriving in full force as an insolent smile formed on his lips, calling Nappa’s bluff. He didn’t feel like getting popped in the face by the punk. Despite his size, Vegeta was a scrappy street kid who could take him down with a well-placed hit.

Nappa had never understood the boy’s aversion to human interaction. He wasn’t a people-person himself, but as a veteran in the entertainment industry, he knew when and how to play the game to advance his career. Vegeta, on the other hand, acted as if he’d rather die than encounter another human being, a trait which constantly got him into trouble when he did encounter them, sometimes worse trouble when he crawled into his shell to avoid them.

Since he was a child, he pretended as if he was allergic to relationships, something Nappa assumed the boy would eventually grow out of. Instead, it had only gotten worse, especially once he gained easy access to substances that could numb him or feign his happiness. He was twenty-two, yet he’d never had a real friend, not a kami-damned one. Kid ground his heels in as if he was determined to be alone for the rest of his life out of pure spite.

Sure, Vegeta had been dealt a shitty hand, which Nappa tried his best to make up for, but he wasn’t even willing to try to be real. Instead, all his energy went into putting up a front, a giant fuck you to everyone around him. Maybe he was still too young to realize that he was only hurting himself.

Vegeta had been pushing everyone away for so long, he wondered if the boy was even capable of forming a healthy bond with another individual. The only relationships he entertained were forged by convenience, such was Nappa’s own relationship with him. Anything Nappa asked or expected from him was turned into a twisted game of chicken. Vegeta sucked-up what he needed and offered nothing in return, like a damned con artist. Whether the kid was conscious of that fact or not was another matter.

“Fine, have it your way. I don’t mind telling all those people that you work here. I’ll post your Kami-dammed schedule online if I have to.”

“Fine,” Kid spat. “I quit.”

Nappa’s patience shifted from the usual parental threats into utter frustration, widening his stance and crossing his arms as he switched the conversation into Saiygo.

“Then it’s a good thing you scored yourself another sugar mama,” Nappa said in their native tongue, flicking his chin at Briefs, who was unknowingly straddling a serial Casanova. “Because until you work and pay rent, you’re not living at my house.”

Vegeta smiled condescendingly. “Like I’d really miss that roach-infested palace.” 

Nappa rubbed his forehead and let out a sigh. Convincing Vegeta to grow up was going to give him a concussion, banging his head against an immovable wall. He never wanted to be a parent. Wasn’t it just his luck to fall into the role for the utmost selfish shithead to ever grace the Earth.

“If you piss off Kakarot and get kicked out of his band in the process, I won’t help you,” Nappa said. “I spoke on your behalf after Icejin. I convinced the brothers that you would be a good choice after everything you’ve done. But I’m done defending you.”

Not wanting to work at the store was one thing he accepted wouldn’t last before it started. In fact, he was amazed that Vegeta had made it through the set-up phase without a hissy fit. Not one. Usually, his little tantrums were consistent, adding-up and eventually erupting into full-fledged mental breakdowns. That he hadn’t lost control yet was nothing short of a miracle.

What irked Nappa now was knowing exactly how it would all play out with Kakarot’s gal. Vegeta had done this before. He was advantageous and uncaring. Poor Briefs had no idea what mental sabotage laid in store for her. He only hoped that it wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass.

No matter how much Nappa secretly wanted to see Vegeta get his shit handed to him by the happy-go-lucky Son brother, he was wary that this fragile thread between Kakarot and Vegeta was all that held the operation together, only thanks to Kakarot’s naïve trust in the cocky piece of shit that stood in front of him.

He waved a hand at Vegeta’s ominous smirk.

“He’s all yours, Briefs,” Nappa said in English. “Don’t come crying to me when this goes to shit.”

He turned on his heel to stomp back through the door he came through, slamming it shut behind him.

***

The mile-long walk to the woman’s apartment had Vegeta questioning his decision to hook up with her. An endless line of self-inquiry was punted back and forth inside his head while he watched the girl try and fail to ride his skateboard next to him, flinging herself from the thing every time she hit an uneven crack in the sidewalk.

Though he only gave away the fact that Nappa had banished him from the house when he refused to be pimped out by the fool, the girl wouldn’t ease her gripe, making it all about herself.

“But you were talking about me, and Goku too! What were you saying?”

Vegeta shrugged. “You’re the self-proclaimed genius.”

“I speak in algorithms and equations, not your dead language,” she sneered.

“Bitch, it’s not dead. And I already told you everything.”

She scoffed and tripped over the front of the board again with enough momentum to land her on hands and knees, smacking the cement with a frustrated groan.

Vegeta crossed his arms and stared down at her, stifling the amusement that threatened to turn his stoic expression into a smile when he recalled her in a similar position less than a week ago. “Just carry the damn thing. If you sprain another ankle, I won’t carry you.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed before an impish grin formed across her pretty features. “Or,” she said, shoving the skateboard into his only free hand, the other occupied by his guitar. “You could just be grateful that I’m letting you stay at my apartment.”

How the woman had taken hold over his mind all week long, he couldn’t begin to understand. She invaded his thoughts like a rampant virus. When he saw her again at the party with that pathetic frat boy hanging on her, it felt like his brain had shorted-out, like the genius had figured out a way to hack him. A part of him wondered if she’d invited the moron for this exact purpose. He fought to control the urge to push her up against the nearest building and kiss the stupid smirk from her lips.

Her building was a brand new, eight-story complex that she was proud to explain replaced some dilapidated row houses in the gentrifying neighborhood, just a few blocks from the university.

Vegeta spun around the brightly lit foyer—taking in the modern artwork on the walls, the trendy, glass light fixtures, and thick crown molding—while Bulma chatted up the portly door man at the front desk. The lobby smelled like an expensive perfume was being pumped through the vents.

Bulma guided him to the elevator that shot them to the top floor where she and Chi-Chi shared a a corner suite with vaulted ceilings. The open floor plan hosted a large kitchen, complete with the stainless-steel appliances and a giant center island. A large living and dining area with a wraparound deck sat on the far side of the room. The only places he’d ever been that made him feel this out of place were his previous bandmates’ homes and the woman’s own family estate.

The girl grabbed his belongings from his hands and proceeded down a hallway that jutted from the side, setting them inside the first bedroom doorway.

“Don’t bother taking off your shoes,” she chimed over her shoulder.

Vegeta barely heard her, drawn like a bug to the panoramic view of the city’s downtown lights that shined through the sliding glass doors.

Staring out at the skyline reminded him of North. Though the West City downtown was minuscule in comparison, it was no less powerful from the vantage point where he stood now. Its skyscrapers lit like candles from the soil, their bright lights stretching toward the heavens in a display that reminded him of the last time he’d ever been this far above the shadows. He was seventeen, at Frieza and Cooler’s family penthouse on the east side of the city park, pouring drinks off the balcony that he was smart enough by that point to know had been laced to fuck with him.

A light came on, and he heard the glass door slide open and shut behind him. His breath caught when he turned and saw her standing there, framed by two large pots of bougainvillea on either side of the door. He hadn’t noticed them in the dark. The thick bushes of magenta flowers wound up wooden lattices taller than the girl herself, flowers that flourished in the Saiya deserts like weeds, the ones his mother used to plant along terraces of their yard. They were hearty and beautiful, not easily killed. He shut his eyes, trying to pull a veil over the images triggered in his memory.

Bulma stepped toward him and slipped a hand around his waist, under his shirt. “Pretty, isn’t it,” she said. 

“In a way, I guess.” Vegeta inhaled sharply, trying to reign in the tiny ounce of control he felt was quickly slipping toward a panic attack.

He kept his eyes closed, refusing to toss a glance in any direction. Anxiety crept into his chest, tightening his breath, a path he was sure would snowball and make it disappear, suffocate him. He wanted to coil into a ball, to drift off into a thoughtless sleep, but feeling her warm palm against his hip, he forced his eyes open. It was dark again; she’d turned off the deck light. Readjusting his vision, he could barely see her, just the city lights reflecting off the whites of her big eyes. She stood on the tips of her toes and brought her face to him, letting both hands slide up the skin of his back.

Her lips soothed him in a way that all the self-therapy exercises, Nappa’s parental comfort, nor his long list of other lovers ever could. He kissed the girl back. Unable to tamper down the disquieted feelings that threatened to choke him, he followed Bulma to her bedroom and allowed her to attempt to mend him for one night in a way he believed she could.


	6. Just Bad News

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this one a little early since I have a few chapters queued-up, and the next chapter is super short. Most of this is GoChi, and I've never written them before, so please lend me some feedback if you've got it. I'm super nervous about writing for them, especially in a modern AU where they are in a world that's a bit OOC. Just to forewarn, Ox King is very OOC! 
> 
> Thanks again, [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) for beta reading. I've added some sections since then, so if there's any typos/errors, they're all mine!

Well that wasn’t what she was expecting. Far from the confidence she was shown in the office, where the boy displayed a domineering sexual prowess, he was anything but confident when it came down to it. She couldn’t figure out what had changed him. One minute he was the give no fucks person she first met, and the next he had pulled back into himself.

Granted, the sex was still pretty great. He was the first guy who actually gave a shit whether she came or not. The first one to venture his lips south of her waistband. Fucking mind blowing as that was—his hot tongue working between her legs until a ripple of ecstacy broke between her thighs and shot through every nerve, forcing her to pull him up by the hair when it became too intense—she still couldn’t help but feel like he wasn’t really there, just going through the motions. There was an emptiness in his eyes she couldn’t shake, like his mind had drifted to some faraway place and couldn’t be pulled back to the present.

The result was all the same. She slept against his back, entwined around him like the first night, but buck naked, pressed against his warm skin.

Damn could the boy sleep. Not a muscle moved when Chi-Chi and Goku woke up, two people who had little self-awareness when it came to the noise they created. Whether that be cooking, arguing, or sex, the two always tested the limits of the apartment’s expensive, thick walls and doors. This morning, they opted for arguing, as Chi-Chi’s muffled shouts seeped through to Bulma’s ears.

Her north-facing room was dimly lit by cool daylight that spilled from sliding glass doors, leading to nowhere but a barred-in Juliet balcony. She tried to wake Vegeta with a light shake of his shouler, only to be met with mumbled, foreign curses. Maybe he wasn’t a morning person. She tried another tactic, slipping her hand between his legs as she kissed the soft skin behind his ear. 

That worked.

He turned his head, his eyes half open, scowling at her under his black lashes as she gripped his awakening anatomy in her palm, running her hand softly up and down his shaft. 

“What do you have to do today?” she asked, tipping her forehead to his.

He flipped over to face her, lids still half closed. He kissed her on his own accord, a lazy press of his lips against hers as he maneuvered her to her back to place himself on top. Answering her question with a huff against her neck, he slipped a hand between her legs. 

***

The vein along her temple twitched when Chi-Chi entered the kitchen to see her boyfriend no more prepared for the day than he had been an hour ago. “Goku, why are you just standing around eating a muffin? We’re going to brunch! Go get changed!” 

The wide eyes and scratch at the back of his head told Chi-Chi he forgot to bring nice clothes. Her boyfriend leaned against the counter trying to choke down the dry pastry, wearing the same dark t-shirt from last night that read _Cannibal Corpse_ in red, drippy letters. As much as she appreciated the tight jeans, the good Reverend Ox certainly wouldn’t be a fan.

“For fucks sake, Goku! You can’t wear that to brunch with my father!”

As if one fire wasn’t enough to put out, Bulma swung open her bedroom door sporting her own morbid tee and a pair of hot pink booty shorts, her hair all mussed and last night’s make-up racooned around her eyes. 

Chi-Chi nearly ruptured an aneurysm when the prince of darkness followed at her roommate’s heels. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Bulma brought the guy home with her, after listening to Nappa bitch about the two of them all night. 

“Oh hell no! Vegeta, you gotta go! If my father meets the likes of you in my apartment, he’ll think I need to be exorcised.”

“You dad’s coming today?” Bulma quirked an eyebrow and picked up the half eaten muffin Goku had set on the counter, stuffing the thing into her cheeks like a chipmunk.

“ _Yes!_ In a half hour! I told you, both of you, like twenty times!”

The two idiots merely shrugged at each other with wide-eyed guilt. 

“And you’re worried about me?” Vegeta grinned.

Chi-Chi hated to admit that he had a point. At least his button-up covered his tattoos, and the girl jeans weren’t so obvious on his lean frame. Lose the lip ring and bitter sarcasm for a few hours, and he could sub-in as the _musician boyfriend_ her father was expecting to meet.

But no, she actually liked her _real_ , absent-minded boyfriend, and alongside feeling anxious to introduce Goku to her her father, she was excited too. Though they’d only been dating for six months, Goku was the first serious boyfriend she’d ever had. Hell, she’d already lived with him through the summer, shared a bedroom in that scummy house, not that her father needed to know those details. Her dad was strict, and he followed a moral code that could come across as dated, often judgemental. But with her dad, first impressions were everything. If Goku could break through that one, thin layer, he was gold.

“Bulma, seriously, leave now, and take the demon boy with you. Goku, go home or to a store; I don’t care. Just find something nice to wear and meet us at the restaurant.”

It took a good fifteen minutes to corral the party of freaks out of the apartment, and Chi-Chi didn’t miss the zeni Bulma slipped into Goku’s hand before the elevator doors closed. She knew she was being a bit demanding, crazy probably. But it was hard to merge the real feelings she had for Goku with her father’s expectations and her own respect for her old man and his opinion. Hints were left at first. Then, trying to ease her father into the idea of her dating a musician and not an aspiring doctor, she fibbed a bit: told him Goku owned a music shop, owned a house, played classic, wholesome rock-n-roll in his spare time. The truth, she could tell him once he’d gotten to know Goku, warmed-up a bit.

That’s the path she took with Bulma, and her father now adored the loudmouthed bitch, chuckled at her unwomanly antics. Still, Chi-Chi knew that her same-sex, college-enrolled roommate was one thing, and her boyfriend was going to be held to a higher standard. 

Funny, Chi-Chi always thought, if she acted like Bulma, a person her father seemed to like, she’d have been sent to some nunnery, at the very least a community college close to home where her dad could keep tabs on her. Then again, if she had Bulma’s personality, she’d be over a hundred credits deep in debt without a viable major and escorting an arrogant, self-hating asswipe home on a Saturday morning. 

Not long after they’d gone, her father arrived in his typical, early fashion. He stood stiffly in the middle of her fancy apartment, glancing about the space with a bewildered expression. Of course, he reminded her to thank the Briefs for their generosity, reminded her that nice things like this were earned through discipline and dedication; they weren’t free. Chi-Chi couldn’t get the man out of there fast enough, knowing the conversation was headed toward some sermon on her generation’s diluted work ethic.

The restaurant was a short drive from their apartment. Chi-Chi nervously sipped her coffee as she and her father waited for Goku to join them, but after nearly an hour, they ordered without him. 

“He just opened a new store yesterday. He’s probably tied up with that,” Chi-Chi lied, watching her father bat a hand as the server refilled his mug.

“It’s fine. I’d rather spend time with you first, anyway.” 

The heat in Chi-Chi’s cheeks dissolved. What was she so worried about? Her father was loosening up a bit since she’d turned eighteen and moved to the city. He trusted her because she’d always toed the line when it came to the things that mattered, never disappointed. Her entire life was dedicated to her future self, and, quite honestly, she liked that life. 

Flying by the seat of her pants like Goku, or to a more extreme degree Bulma, always stressed her out. Those two lived one day at a time, waking up with a vague sense of purpose, instant gratification being the foremost thing on their minds, whether it was food or concerts or whatever hair-brained goals they decided to conquer every twenty-four hours. They weren’t self-deprecating about it either, just free spirits floating through time and space as their personalities collided with the more serious people around them. Though that life wasn’t for her, Chi-Chi admired the trait in them, and it worked both ways. Not to toot her own horn, but Chi-Chi knew she deserved full credit for getting the boys to commit to a recording session, guiding Goku through the process of negotiations between their label and producers. Goals, commitment, Goku needed it just as much as Chi-Chi needed a beta blocker.

“Did you hear back about your pre-law application?”

“We won’t hear back for at least a week.” Chi-Chi reminded him. Roughly three in every one-hundred applicants were admitted to the prestigious program every year, and she was smart, but so were a lot of people. “It’s competitive, you know. Please don’t get your hopes up.”

“You’re a shoe-in, Chi-Chi,” he meant it as a compliment, she knew, but with the odds and his lack of understanding, it felt like crushing pressure, a cartoon anvil waiting to smash her over the head. If she didn’t get in this year, he’d mope about it, and she’d feel guilty, like she wasn’t trying hard enough when she knew she was trying as much as her sanity would allow. 

She was only nineteen, and after moving to the city and meeting interesting characters like Goku and Bulma, Chi-Chi realized she’d missed out on a lot of the adolescent experiences this world had to offer. As much as she loved and respected her father, she was slowly learning what it meant to forge her own path, alongside dealing with the crushing guilt of doing anything that didn’t quite hold to his standards. Reconciling the two worlds was proving harder than she anticipated.

Finally, Goku strode through the front door, nearly shattering the glass as he swung it with too much force to smack into the cafe’s brick wall. His hair was still a mess, but he’d changed into a clean, white button-up and a pair of jeans without any holes, loose enough to almost pass as men’s pants.

Her father followed her line of vision and hoisted his big frame from the booth to shake his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, son. Reverend Ox.”

“Hi, I’m Goku!” he smiled warmly. “Sorry, I’m late.”

“Not a problem. Sit down, we’ll get the gal back to take your order.” Her father slide a menu across the table and snapped his fingers at the waitress across the room.

“Dad, don’t snap. This isn’t Mount Paozu. It seems rude if she doesn’t know you.” Chi-Chi tried to sink into the booth as the server rolled her eyes and her father ignored her. Instead, he watched Goku scan the menu with interest, like he was studying another species.

“How’s the new store? First day, I hear. You sure you got time to spend with us during your grand opening?”

“Oh yeah! Not a problem. I asked for today off,” Goku smiled.

Chi-Chi nudged Goku under the table with her foot. “What he means is, there’s enough quality employees to handle it. He has a whole team.” She hadn’t exactly told Goku that her father thought he owned the shops himself, not wanting to hurt his feelings. This could prove tricky.

“Uh, yeah…” Goku shot her a glance under his bent brows. “A whole team.”

He wasn’t stupid. After the first few shin splints, Goku understood quite well what Chi-Chi was up to, making him out to be someone he wasn’t. It was awkward enough to dress like an alter boy, but to pretend that he was some successful small-business owner that played the golden oldies on the weekends, that was too much. Just blatant lies, and the more Chi-Chi steered the conversation, the angrier Goku became. Was she really so ashamed of him? 

The moment she excused herself for the bathroom, Goku resolved to level with the man. Hell, he really liked Chi-Chi, but he liked himself too, and he wasn’t about to hide from her father. 

“Look, Mr. Ox… I mean Reverend… I don’t know what Chi-Chi’s told you, but I’m nineteen. I work for minimum wage, and I don’t own anything but a few guitars. I play hardcore music, you know...like punk?”

Goku was surprised to see the reverend nod, sighing as he rubbed his thick palm over his beard. Despite what Chi-Chi feared about her own father, Goku saw no judgement there, not quite the kind he was used to from older generations, the people that scowled at him on the street and pulled their children in close, as if brushing shoulders with the likes of him would spread some evil spell.

But then the reverend clapped his palms against the table and averted his gaze to the plate of food before him. “Let me level with you, son. Chi-Chi is the only thing I’ve got. Her mother passed the moment she was born, and it wasn’t always easy building a life in a small, dwindling town. Not a lot of opportunity for a young, smart woman. And I’ll be damned if my only daughter doesn’t deserve the best. You seem like a nice enough kid, but she’s got school loans, six figures of ‘em once she gets outta law school, and an uncertain world ahead of her. The job market ain’t what it used to be, and for gals like her, it’s twice as hard to make a name. It’s asking a lot, but I’d be grateful if you let her down easy.”

Goku frowned. “Are you asking me to break up with her?”

“I’m not asking. I’m telling you to do what’s in her best interest. If you care for her the way she says, you’ll do her that favor, won’t you?”

Dating Chi-Chi always felt like it _was_ both their best interests. Sure, they argued from time to time, but on the whole, they encouraged each other. He wasn’t a distraction. Maybe he couldn’t afford her debt, but what did that matter if they made each other happy? That’s where his head was at before he found himself sitting across the table from her overbearing father, a man whose entire world revolved around his only child. 

The reverend's demand rattled him. Chi-Chi was smart and destined for success, and Goku wasn’t ever going to be a traditional provider. A struggling artist without an education, that’s what he was; he’d never be able to meet her on the same level. And though he wasn’t ashamed of it on the whole, he’d always been worried about this moment: hearing the words he knew her father was bound to inform, that Goku wasn’t good enough. In the back of his mind, he’d known it all along. It’s why Chi-Chi lied about him. He was still bitter about it, that she thought so lowly of him she lied about his occupation and his goals. If Chi-Chi herself honestly thought she deserved more, deserved this character she’d created, then maybe her father had a point.

Chi-Chi smiled nervously as she scooted back into the booth beside her father. 

“I, uh… I just got called into work, Chi-Chi. I’m sorry, but with Vegeta quitting and all, the schedule is all messed up. I gotta take off.”

He could barely bring himself to look at her as he slid from the booth and out the door.

***

They’d been there for over two hours, and Bulma no longer had the patience to dally through the final stretch. “For Kami’s sake, Vegeta, just put down my address!” 

He’d passed the driver’s test with flying colors, but was failing at filling out the paperwork, making himself a few inches taller and hovering the pen over the address line. 

“Are you asking me to move in with you?”

“You got somewhere else to live? Give!” Bulma didn’t bother to hide a self-congratulatory smile and snatched the clipboard, giggling to herself as she crossed out five-nine and wrote five-seven before filling out the address line.

“Bitch,” he muttered against her ear, but he didn’t mean it, not with the little smirk that traced up the corners of his lips. Bulma smiled and handed the clipboard back to the DMV clerk, crushing her ear to her neck where his breath had brushed against it. 

The clerk raised her grouchy eyebrows before she hammered her stamp of approval across the paperwork. “All right then, Mr. Ouji. Congratulations, you are now a licensed operator of a motor vehicle.”

“Well, now you can drive us home legally,” Bulma grinned, tossing him her keys as they made their way back to the parking lot. She fully intended to toss some celebratory sex his way, but when they pulled into the parking ramp of her building, Chi-Chi’s car was already back. “Stay here for a sec. Chi-Chi’s home, and I don’t want her to get pissed if you come up while her dad is there. I’ll be right back!”

Vegeta shrugged. Pulling out his phone, probably to pretend like he had friends and better things to do besides play _Snake_ on the device like he had been for the past few hours at the DMV.

The apartment was quiet, as if nobody was home. Chi-Chi wasn’t in any of the common areas, nor the bathroom. Bulma cracked open the door to her bedroom, and there she was, curled in the fetal position on her bed, her black hair covering her face like veil as she cried. 

“Cheech? What’s wrong?” Bulma leapt onto the bed and curled herself around her friend, brushing the long, shiny strands away from Chi-Chi’s eyes. “Brunch not go well?”

“No… It was fine, I guess. But… but he, of course, he doesn’t like him. And Goku left. He showed up late, and then he left in the middle. He said he had to work, but I’m not an idiot, Bulma. He lied. I stopped by the shop and he wasn’t there, where he said he’d be.

“And then my dad acted all knowing about it, almost like he’d asked him to leave or something! We got into an argument, again, about my pre-law application, just unrelated, and then he said he had a headache and went back to the hotel.”

“I’m sorry!” Bulma hugged Chi-Chi closer, and the more she squeezed the woman, the more she whimpered like a doggy toy. “Do you want to call Goku?” 

“I tried!” Chi-Chi wailed. “He’s not answering me.”

“I’ll call him if you want.”

“No, don’t.” Chi-Chi sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know what to say to him right now, B. My dad’s picking me up in a few hours for dinner and a play, and I’d rather deal with Goku tomorrow once he’s gone, if that makes sense.”

Bulma nodded. With the amount of stress her father put her under, she didn’t envy her roommate. The reverend was nice enough, but damn, he set the bar so high, it seemed Chi-Chi was barely holding on. Even though she’d loosened up considerably since Bulma met her, to the point that she seemed like any other college sophomore, it was guilt that always sent Chi-Chi into a regressed depression, cuddling her stuffed animals in her pink PJs as she vowed never to drink again. Goku was actually good for her. He was responsible and innocent, for the most part. Bulma, Raditz and Krillin once tried to place bets on Chi-Chi and Goku’s virginity, but there was no point in betting when none of them were willing to wager that they weren’t virgins before they’d started dating.

“Can you come instead? I really need support, and now that Goku is supposedly working, we have an extra ticket. Maybe you can talk him up? Tell some nice stories about him?”

“Of course! Just let me tell Vegeta. He’s downstairs. Two seconds!” Bulma planted a kiss on Chi-Chi’s head before she hopped toward the door.

“Bulma, wait!” Her roommate called at her back. “Nappa said he kicked him out. So, is he living with _us_ now?”

Slowly, Bulma turned back to Chi-Chi with a clenched, toothy smile. 

“I knew it. Ugh, this day couldn’t get any worse.” Chi-Chi threw herself back against the mattress. 

“Just for a few days, Cheech, until Nappa gets over his beef. I promise!” That probably wasn’t true, but telling Chi-Chi what she needed to hear seemed like the best approach at the moment.

“Well… at least he’s clean,” Chi-Chi uttered with a wave of her hand against the air before she sat up again dejectedly. It was good timing to break the news to her roommate, who was more worried about her own issues to dedicate much energy toward hating Vegeta; though she still had enough headspace to add, “If he so much as looks at me wrong, I swear to Kami, his ass is out on the street where it belongs!”

“Fair!” Bulma shouted over her shoulder. 

She could rein him in, make him play nice with Chi-Chi if it meant free housing, she was sure. But when Bulma returned to the parking ramp to speak to him, the car was gone.

***

 _Hi Vegeta u busy?_ a text popped over his display, ruining his best snake streak yet today. 

_What u want_ , Vegeta responded.

 _Come here?_ Kakarot texted him an address.

It was a tavern, a divey one at that with nothing but purple-pock-skinned old men drinking at this hour. Kakarot was hunched over the bar with a glass of dark liquor clamped between his claws.

“A little early, don’t you think?”

“It’s five? Isn’t it?” The man pressed himself upright with a slurry swagger, glancing around the room as if he expected wall to wall clocks.

“Not quite,” Vegeta said. Clearly Kakarot had been drinking for a while. His white-collared shirt seemed to have suffered the brunt thus far, with brown dribbles streaked down the front.

“Oh,” he shrugged. “Shit.”

“I take it daddy wasn’t impressed.” 

“Heh,” Goku smiled and set his elbows on the bar, downing the rest of his drink as he twirled a finger to gesture for another round. “Not really. But what was I expecting? I’m not anybody. Just another… whatever it is we are… strugglers.” He waved a hand between them. 

“Speak for yourself, Kakarot.”

He rolled his eyes and nodded at his glass. “Look, I’m sorry for asking you here. I know you don’t drink, and you probably don’t want to put up with me doin’ it. But Krillin is covering your shift, and Raditz is… Raditz.”

“You want to go to a show?” Vegeta interjected. “Refused is playing at the Lookout. I can get us in.” He’d meant to take Bulma, but Kakarot looked so pathetic, maybe a blast of quality hardcore punk would do him some good. 

Goku looked up suspiciously. It was odd, the fact that Vegeta showed up at all was odd. He hadn’t expected a text back, much less the man to show up in person. He felt almost mad, mad that Vegeta was finally offering him a thread, one small overture of friendship, and it wasn’t what he imagined. It felt sucky, needy in a way. After trying for a month to break through to the guy, now Vegeta chose to be real, now that Goku was inebriated in the middle of the day and his girlfriend’s father just told him to fuck off, like he was some soul-sucking delinquent. 

“Vegeta, what do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything, idiot. You texted me.”

“I know. That’s not what I’m asking. And I’m not an idiot,” Goku scolded, flicking his finger toward him, like that would serve his point. “But I just feel like you’re fucking with me, and maybe I’ve been too stupid or something to call you out. Everyone’s been warning me, but I dunno. Shit, maybe I am an idiot.” He shrugged and gulped on his fresh drink. 

It was hard to tell what game Vegeta was playing, or if he was paying one at all. At first, Goku believed that they wanted all the same thing: to hone their craft, to make a decent living doing something they were both passionate about. Waking up each morning inspired to create, that was the dream for Goku until he met Chi-Chi. She changed him, made his dreams a little bigger, more concrete and businesslike, encouraging him to find a label to produce his records. And then Vegeta came along, and the project suddenly snowballed in a direction that was do or die. The pressure that Vegeta placed on everyone around him was stifling at times.

Goku didn’t need fame or fortune, but maybe that’s where he and Vegeta differed. Vegeta had that at one point, and the details of how he ever lost it were hazy rumors. If Vegeta was now gaming his band to secure his own future, well then maybe Goku deserved what was coming to him for being a trusting fool. 

“Kakarot, I’m not going to steal anything from you, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Vegeta managed to look him in the eyes without a cutting smirk. “I’m on your side. With the band, I mean. I don’t give a flying fuck about the girl or whatever. I’m just trying to make it better.”

“Make it better…” Goku nodded, sucking his bottom lip. Vegeta didn’t even bother sugar-coating what he meant. His songwriting wasn’t good enough, and Vegeta was going to make it better. “Kind of backhanded, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t mean-

“Just say it, Vegeta. This is a ladder move, something you’re gonna change and tear apart, make it your own thing, only to abandon us and hop to the next rung. Whatever comes along after you’re done with us.”

“Sounds like you’ve been talking to Nappa all night.”

 _Touché_ , Goku thought. He had been, but mostly in Vegeta’s defense. But maybe Nappa had a point. Vegeta was a user. He stormed in like a hurricane, unfeeling and chaotic, ripping everyone else apart with his own behavior and then leaving them high and dry to sift through the debris once he’d left. That’s what happened last night when they all had to sort through his schedule and commit to covering his shifts after he rage quit the shop. 

“Deny it then.” Goku downed the last of his drink without blinking, staring the man down.

“Kakarot, whatever you think this business is, it’s not. One day you’re something, and the next you’re not. There are no ladder moves. It’s just survival. Now, will you get your sorry ass off that stool and come with me to a free show?”

Goku narrowed his eyes, trying to read him, but for once Vegeta seemed sincere. “All right,” Goku stood from the stool a little to quickly, grabbing onto the bar as he stumbled. “I’m pretty drunk though.”

Vegeta rolled his eyes, but much to Goku’s surprise, he offered an arm to balance.

***

Bulma and Chi-Chi came home to an empty apartment. She almost expected Vegeta to be there, not that she took the whole moving in with her thing too seriously. They did just meet a week ago, and she wasn’t a clingy psycho, at least she hoped. But he took her car without asking and hadn’t responded to a single text or phone call all night. Like Yamcha all over again, the red flags were waving strong.

On top of Vegeta’s lack of communication, her night with the Ox fam was awkward to say the least. Chi-Chi played the dutiful passive-aggressive preacher’s daughter. Instead of confronting the man, she was pissed about the long line for the bathroom, the people whispering in the seats in front of them, even the cab driver’s misdirected route that ran up their meter drew Chi-Chi’s wrath. But her father, the person she owed her lip, was immune. Neither of them spoke about Goku, not once. They talked about the terrible play, about the expensive drinks, about school tuition, about Bulma’s non-existent ambitions as if the comparison would make them both feel better. Despite her annoyance at being their punching bag, Bulma sat there and took their blows with a smile, knowing her friend needed her support. 

After Bulma helped guide Chi-Chi to bed and laid with her sad, sullen friend watching _Friends_ reruns until she fell asleep, Bulma wandered back into the living room to play _Super Metroid_ until she was sure Vegeta wasn’t coming home tonight and her own eyes grew heavy. Controller in hand, she was almost out when the front door banged open. 

“Pick up your goddamn feet!” Vegeta shouted, dragging Goku inside. Goku’s arm was wrapped around Vegeta’s shoulders. He was clearly wasted, but they both looked like they had their asses handed to them. Blood trailed down the front of Goku’s shirt, dripping from his still bleeding nose, staining his giggly smile. Vegeta busted a brow, would likely wake-up with a black eye. 

“What the fuck happened to you two?”

“Kakarot thought it would be funny to kick and hit people while he was skanking. It got a little out of hand.” Vegeta said, biting his lip to stifle his amusement.

Goku laughed, drunkenly, pulling Vegeta into a headlock. “Ah! It was funny, Bulma. They were maaaaaaaad.”

“Oh Goku. Will you sit down? You’re dripping blood everywhere.” Bulma ran to the bathroom for first aid. Chi-Chi had enough of a day, she didn’t need to wake-up at four in the morning to the two blockheads wrestling and smearing blood all over the hardwood.

Once she managed to split them up, she fixed Goku up on the couch with kleenex stuffed up his nostrils and an ice pack over his face. Vegeta denied treatment until she refused to let him bleed all over her sheets and threatened he sleep out in the living room with his comrade. Only then did he let her clean up his cuts. He was pretty proud of himself, recounting every punch, every kick with brutal detail. Even completely sober, the guy was giddy over a night of throwing fists into a crowd of strangers to avenge his… friend? Were they friends now? It was kind of sweet, him spending the night with Goku the way she had with Chi-Chi. Splitting her allegiance between the two was difficult, and she didn’t want Goku to feel left out, like she was taking sides.

“Thanks, Vegeta.” Bulma said, climbing into bed herself. He didn’t acknowledge her compliment, but he did roll over to face her with droopy lids, one of them threatening to swell shut where he’d been hit. He extended a hand across the bed and plopped his palm on top of her cheek with a slap before he closed them completely, as if that was his version of cuddling. She’d take it. Bulma smiled under his palm as she drifted.


	7. Crush Me Baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another GoChi focused chapter because these two lovebirds have some gunk to work out. Thanks a million for the read through [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres). Again, I've added a few things since, so any flubs are all my own.

If anyone had told Chi-Chi that her new routine every other weekday would be watching _The Price is Right_ with Vegeta, she’d have thought they were crazy, but somehow here she was, still in her pajamas at 11a.m. on a Monday, eating cereal straight out of the box, both of them shouting numbers at the screen. 

“Bullshit, Bob Barker! You old, weathered whore! Look that one up,” Vegeta barked. Kami, the guy couldn’t bear to lose at anything, and she stifled a laugh imagining him as a real contestant—the studio editors frantically trying to censor him, preparing to fork out a fortune in fines to the FCC.

Chi-Chi traded her cereal for her laptop to research the price of a Black & Decker toaster oven. Was it productive? Absolutely not. Therapeutic? Not even a little. But it was distracting enough, and she couldn’t find the frame of mind to study. Her spirit felt split in two, half of it constantly lingering on Goku’s hasty break-up, the other half eating her alive, guilty over her lack of aspiration and focus—all the same, due to Goku’s hasty break-up. She hadn’t spoken to him in person for nearly two weeks. He was avoiding her like the plague; he’d even switched his schedule with his cousin to work the downtown shop rather than the new store near her apartment and campus. 

“Nope. Bob’s price _is_ right,” She said. 

Vegeta leaned over to glare at her computer screen. Strangely, she was actually glad to have him around. He wasn’t half the pain he was back at the boys’ house in the summer. Probably because he was getting laid multiple times a day, and unlike that scummy rat-trap, the girls’ apartment was nice, clean and modern, something the perfectionist seemed to appreciate. He did dishes without asking, kept his belongings neat and orderly, and most of all, he tolerated Chi-Chi all the same, keeping his biting commentary to a minimum. “You want to watch General Hospital?”

He shrugged and picked up his pencil and notebook from the coffee table, resolving to get back to his own work. She watched him thumb through pages and pages of handwritten sheet music to where he’d left off yesterday, squinting at the notes as he tapped his foot and tipped his head back and forth, as if humming the melody in his head. 

“Vegeta, have you-

“No,” he snapped without looking up. 

He knew what she was going to ask: had he talked to Kakarot about her? The answer was a definite no, every damn day, and vice versa. Whatever the hell was going on between them, Vegeta did not want to be their courier. It was bad enough being forced to hang around the mopey saps. If it wasn’t Chi-Chi mulling about at home, then it was Kakarot at practice. He could feel Chi-Chi staring at him as she batted the back of her head against the couch in frustration. “Knock it off. I can’t concentrate.”

“It’s just… a text message! That’s how he dumped me, through a text.” 

“Woman, I heard you the first hundred times you said it. Go talk to the damn fool if you’re so worried about it.” 

It was a cowardly move, Vegeta would admit. Not that he’d ever bothered to text whenever he left a girl high and dry, but he’d also never committed to one like Kakarot, not officially. This was the first time Vegeta had to endure the feelings of the losing party. Watching Chi-Chi slip into a state of unconsolable misery wasn’t fun. Thankfully, she was too level headed to let it incapacitate her completely. She still went to classes, upheld the sterile perfection of her living quarters, but she was testy and tired, lounging around in her pajamas between lectures, watching TV rather than studying or socializing. She hadn’t bothered to cook in the past week much less pour a bowl of cereal; she ate the flakes straight from the box.

“I tried! For the hundredth time, I told you, he’s avoiding me.”

Vegeta groaned and stood, chucking his notebook to the couch. He fished in his backpack for his cigarettes, anything to avoid Chi-Chi’s drama. Everyday Monday, Wednesday and Friday was the same thing, while Bulma was in morning classes, he and Chi-Chi would take a few hours of mind-numbing media straight to the dome. While the first hour or two were pleasant, the girl would always start fishing for information about Kakarot that he refused to relay, before she eventually resorted to begging Vegeta to intervene. He could be her distraction, if that’s what she needed. Splitting a bag of Doritos over a game of Mario Kart, that was manageable, but therapy... shit he could barely grapple with his own mind, let alone fix hers.

Kakarot was no better. While he didn’t ask for favors, he still tried to pry intel on Chi-Chi’s wellbeing, and like a broken record, Vegeta found himself repeating the same old lines: _Ask her yourself. Ask him yourself. I’m not your kami-damned messenger._

Chi-Chi pouted as she picked up his notebook from where he’d thrown it, but instead of resuming her sob story, she almost perked up. 

“This is for a piano?” she asked, her eyes darting across the page.

“So? I didn’t know you could read music.”

“Of course I can read sheet music,” Chi-Chi snapped. “I was in the church choir for years. I don’t know anything about metal or hardcore, whatever the hell _you_ play.” She paused a beat, looking back to the notebook in her hands, tracing the scaling notes like she could hear them. “Is this for the band?”

“I dunno yet,” he shrugged. “There’s six more books of that shit. It’s not really for anything yet. Might be able to use some of it for Saiyans, but it’s a little mellow for that. Indie, I guess. Maybe I’ll sell some tunes, or start a side project.”

“What do you have to do to sell them? I mean… How much can you make?”

“Depends. I can sell them outright or for royalties. Royalties are where it’s at if a song gets big. The checks will keep coming even after I croak. It adds up. Especially if a popular artist uses it, or it ends up in a film or something.” 

Why the damn curiosity? They were just songs scrawled across pages, yet the way Chi-Chi fanned through the thick notebook with pinched brows, he could see her wheels were turning. He knew she was clever; according to Kakarot, Chi-Chi negotiated the terms of their recording contract. If that was true, maybe he could convince her to do the same for him personally. Hundreds of arrangements were scribbled in his notebooks, just waiting, drying up like rice paper.

“Indie, huh?” Chi-Chi pulled her attention from the page. “Can you play something?”

“No! Right now?” 

“You got somewhere to be?” Chi-Chi cocked her head; her dark eyes looked up at him expectantly, knowing he had nothing better to do. 

It was still strange what she was asking. They’d always butted heads, never exchanging more than heated insults for the past few months he’d known her. The time they’d spent together alone since Kakarot dumped her was throwing him for a loop. She was being nice, too nice, as if by warming up to him, Vegeta would do her the friendly favor of convincing Kakarot to crawl back to her. He wouldn’t go that far, but he wasn’t above taking advantage of arguing with one less person on the planet, especially one that could maybe help refill his dwindling coffers.

“Fine,” Vegeta huffed and sat back down, picking up the acoustic from where it leaned against the armrest. He tuned it hastily before clipping on the capo to tune it again. “It’s not written for this, so it might be a little awkward, but you’ll get the idea. Hold that up.”

Chi-Chi raised the notebook to his eye level, watching his nimble fingers as he strummed a few warm-up chords before he settled, blowing out a breath as he began to tap his heel. The entire song was full of broken chords, arpeggios running up and down beneath his fingernails in a sad, pretty pattern that fed her mood. He fucked up a few times, strumming over his mistakes before he resumed to pluck against the strings, muttering about the song being meant for a piano.

“That’s really fucking sad.” Chi-Chi couldn’t help it; she dropped the notebook to her lap and tried her best to stifle a good cry. The minor chords, the scaling melody, they tore through the paper-thin barrier she tried to erect to stave off her depression. But at the same time, she asked to hear it knowing the type of song she was letting into her head—dark, pretty melodies that slipped under the crack of Bulma’s door late at night while he was writing. Sometimes she found herself standing in the hallway, straining her ear to hear them. She knew Vegeta’s music wasn’t happy. As a person, he was perpetually grim, but these days, they were two peas in a pod, it seemed. “Why do you write shit like that? Don’t you find it depressing?”

“Not really,” he shrugged and retreated to the sliding glass door with a cigarette between his lips. “What the fuck do I know? I’m not a psychologist.”

Chi-Chi sprawled herself across the couch, committed to wallowing in her own misery, almost forcing the melody to play on repeat in her head. Other than curiosity or a vague desire for self-pity, she didn’t know why she’d asked him to play. 

She plucked Vegeta’s cell phone from the coffee table to check the time. It was nearly noon. Normally, she’d be laying in child’s pose on her yoga mat, but nope, instead she was laying like a child on the couch scrolling through her roommate’s boyfriend’s text messages. She flicked her gaze toward the sliding glass doors, eyeing Vegeta’s back as she quickly typed _meet me at Senzu Bean in an hour_ to Goku’s number. He’d come running for his man crush, she was fairly certain of that. 

No sooner did she hit send when Bulma burst through the door, cheery as ever. Her roommate didn’t even bother taking off her backpack as she strolled past Chi-Chi with an absent-minded hi and bye, beelining for the deck. She tossed her arms around Vegeta’s neck, and his hands slipped around her hips, crushing them together as they ate each other’s faces. Damn, how quickly the tables could turn, Chi-Chi thought. Screw them. If she and Goku couldn’t make it work, those two didn’t have a flying chance in Hell. A honeymoon, that’s all this was.

***

Goku saw her coming down the block. Her black hair was tied up in a tidy bun except for the few long strands that framed her face. Seeing her after the long weeks he spent trying to wipe her from his memory was as hard as he imagined it would be. Dressed in a little pink sundress and a white sweater jacket, Chi-Chi practically floated down path like an an angel, perfection incarnate, and he probably didn’t deserve a girl like her.

“Somehow, I knew it was you,” he said, pressing himself off wall he’d been leaning on. It wasn’t a surprise. Vegeta giving up fizzy energy drinks for an expensive, impromptu coffee date with him would have been more surprising. 

Chi-Chi seemed nervous, her eyes darting down the block, refusing to meet his gaze. “You didn’t give me a choice, Goku. You stopped talking to me, like the past six months were nothing. Am I crazy?” She finally lifted her chin to peer up at him with her dark, dewy eyes.

He felt bad about that. Kami, it killed him, ate at him endlessly that he didn’t man up and explain himself in person, but he was never very good at these kinds of talks, finding it difficult to form the right words. He’d never done this before, broken up with a girl. Hell, he’d never been with one before Chi-Chi. 

“You’re not crazy,” he said. “But do we have to talk here, in public? Can we take a walk?”

“Sure,” Chi-Chi shrugged. 

The sidewalks were relatively empty. Only the occasional student passed, walking with purpose to and from weekday appointments. They made their way down the blocks, side by side with crossed arms, and though every fiber of his being sought to bridge the gap between their shoulders, to wrap an arm around her petite frame and pull her in, he resisted. 

“So what happened?” Chi-Chi finally broke the awkward silence. “Did my dad say something to you?”

He knew that question was coming, but he wasn’t comfortable placing blame on her father. Family was important, and as someone who grew up without his parents, Goku wasn’t going to let Chi-Chi think any less of the only parent she had. The reverend was just doing what he thought was best for his daughter. Who was Goku to say he wasn’t right? They’d only been dating for six months, and there were millions of fish in the sea. He wasn’t anything special. Chi-Chi would easily find one that checked all the boxes, and honestly, so would he. 

“Look, Chi-Chi, I really like you. I loved what we had going, but I don’t think I can ever be the person you need me to be. I’m not gonna be some breadwinning husband. I want to be on the road playing music, three-hundred days a year if I can help it. And I might never make money doing it except to survive, but I don’t care about money. I am who I am, and I don’t think I’m the right person for you.”

“I don’t understand, Goku. Why all of the sudden? Where is this coming from?” Chi-Chi snarled, and stopped in her tracks, forcing Goku to turn around and face her. “You’re acting like I only care about money! I know I get stressed out about tuition, but that’s normal. What the hell gave you the impression that I’m out to be some trophy wife?”

“Kami, that came out wrong. That’s not what I meant.” Why couldn’t he ever say the right thing? The words he needed to get his point across always seemed to evade him. Maybe it was his lack of formal education, or maybe he was a man of action, not words. That’s why Vegeta wrote all their lyrics. Regardless, now that he was face-to-face with her, he had to try. “It’s just…You lied about me, like you were ashamed of me or somethin’. I’m not gonna play pretend, and I’m never going to change. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Goku, I don’t want you to change!” Chi-Chi whined, her voice pitching in frustration. “I just thought, maybe, if my dad could get to know you, then in time, you’d grow on him. You’d change his mind by being yourself. Does that make sense?”

“Not really, no.” How did that make any sense? That was her motive, to make up this fantasy to trick her father into accepting him? It was lousy and hurtful all the same. She might as well have told her dad he was a stock broker. A lie was a lie, and Goku wasn’t interested in playing games; his brother played enough of them for Goku to know that anything but honest communication was a waste of his time.

But then she started to cry. Juicy tears welled at the bottoms of her eyes and broke to trace her cheeks. Seeing her like that, knowing that he was the source of her pain felt like a punch to the gut. All he wanted was to make it stop. Goku wrapped Chi-Chi up in his arms and let her weep against his chest. It felt like they stood there for an eternity with his hand against her head, shielding her from onlookers and the chilly autumn air. Every second of her weeping chipped away at his resolve.

“Maybe we should take some time apart, focus on our own goals for a while. We’ve got an album to record, and you’ve got school. This doesn’t have to be the end. But, you have to figure out what you want and find a way to talk to him.”

Chi-Chi smeared her tears across his shirt before she tipped her head up, staring at him with hopeful eyes. “So, you’re _not_ dumping me?” 

Honestly, that was up to her. If Chi-Chi couldn’t take the reins of her destiny, find a way to be herself and accept him for what he was, then this _was_ the end. Goku smiled weakly and gave her a squeeze. “Just hitting pause, that’s all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was short and sweet, so I'll probably get the next one up pretty quick. I hope you enjoyed the Vegeta/Chi-Chi BrOTP. I have real plans for those two. I don't know why I love the idea of Vegeta and Chi-Chi building a friendship, but they're alike in so many ways, that I think if they were trapped alone in a room together, they'd realize they have a lot in common. As always, please lend your feedback - good, bad or ugly. I can't improve without critique, and I'm always stoked to read it. :)


	8. Clever Napkins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres). Once again, I've added a bunch of stuff last minute, so there might be a few mishaps.

Patience had long since left Vegeta’s roster of emotion as Raditz flubbed his guitar parts for two hours straight.

“Goddammit Raditz! We’re out of time. Either you play the fucking song, or I’ll play it for you!” 

They were already over-budget, trying to write three additional tunes in the process of recording the other seven, all to bring their first LP to meet the thirty minute minimum the label required. Two hours wasted on his sloppy ass, on a single song’s rhythm guitar parts, was threatening to turn Vegeta into a fiery pile of ash.

Nappa came and went, in and out like a professional. He tracked seven songs on drums in the first two days without a hitch and was back in West City, tending to his stores. Vegeta did the same with lead guitar, and Kakarot on bass, but Raditz, fuck, he was a moron. At first, they gave the man some leniency, let the turd try to record his instrument, being _his_ band and all. Vegeta and Kakarot used the opportunity to slave through the missing tracks, writing songs together, which was going surprisingly well. Kakarot’s ideas weren’t half bad, Vegeta had to admit. Usually his tunes were hokey pop rock, but thanks to his breakup, Kakarot seemed to uncover a darker motivation. By writing together, these latest songs would maybe prove to be their best.

Still, everytime they ventured into the control room to listen to what Raditz had recorded, they were met with a cacophony of half-assed showmanship. Sober, maybe he could play the songs. It was just rhythm guitar, after all, just strumming chords. But, Raditz was never sober. Whatever the hell he was on—mostly alcohol, though the uppers weren’t hard to imagine the way he sniffed and traced his way to regular bathroom breaks—he couldn’t carry a fucking tune if he tried, and it was costing them money. Every flub added up to days, which added up to hundreds of zeni.

“That’s it. I fucking give up.” Vegeta picked up his guitar.

“No, wait! I’ll play it!” Kakarot extended his hand toward the instrument. 

“Be my guest,” Vegeta said, handing it over. “You’re done, Raditz. Fuck off, and come back for vocals tomorrow. We’ll take it from here,” he said into the comm. 

Raditz’s face went dark behind the glass, bending his thick brows into a murderous scowl. The sliding glass door of the booth where he’d been tracking opened with a thwack, and Raditz stormed across the live room, rattling cymbals with his heavy steps before he charged into the control room where Vegeta, Kakarot and Master Roshi all stood. 

“Are you fucking kidding me, Vegeta? Last time I checked, this was _my_ band, not yours! Who the hell are you to decide who records what?”

“If you can manage to comp together a decent track and pay for overtime, I’m happy to let you continue. But you’re just as broke as I am. Don’t worry, I’ll give you credits for vocals,” Vegeta smirked.

Raditz jutted his face within an inch of his own, curling his lip over his teeth. “Fuck you. Fuck you both.” He pulled away to glare at his brother. “Go for it Kakarot. This is your fucking show now, isn’t it?” In a fit he threw his guitar at Roshi’s console, earning a line of cusses from the old man before he strode out of the studio.

Kakarot filled Raditz’s place, churning out rhythm for most of the record in a few long hours before Roshi grew antsy, calling it quits for a late night drink. 

The Kame Islands were a strange getaway from West City. Vegeta hadn’t ever been somewhere so small, not for more than a night anyway. Everyone that lived on the islands off-season knew each other, like a small town high school. 

Their routine for the past few weeks was clockwork: wake-up, record for ten hours until Roshi got thirsty; then it was drinks and food at the beach tavern until bar close before they’d pass out back at the house. Though Vegeta wasn’t drinking, he accompanied his bandmates to the bar each night, mostly to escape the damp, dark house and basement studio they’d been sharing to sit outside in the fresh ocean breeze. Even in October, it was warm by the standard he was used to.

The locals were entertaining, bar games seemed to be their comfort, egging on the tight-clothed city boys for a game of darts, billiards or Buck Hunter, and every now and then, committing to a game of Texas Holdem. Being sober had its perks when it came to winning money. Some nights, when they were too tired to go out, he and Kakarot would watch movies in their shared room in Roshi’s house. Raditz had his own room once Nappa had come and gone, but he was hardly there, opting to party with the locals until sunrise, plowing through the days on highs, not sleeping at all most nights. 

As they walked up to the bar, Raditz was on the far end flirting with the same chick bartender he’d been threatening to bone since they’d arrived, some blonde with a North City accent and a violent temper to match. Raditz glared at them from across the wharf as the hot barkeep waltzed over to the three dressed in a skintight pair of jeans, a green tank top and leather bomber jacket, her frizzy hair tied behind her shoulders with a handkerchief. 

“Beer, beer?” She pointed between Goku and Master Roshi who nodded their accord. “You gonna puss out again shortie?”

Vegeta rolled his eyes. “You gonna fucking lay that sorry piece of shit yet and get him off my back?”

Launch laughed and leaned in, “You’ve got some self-control, north boy, but I think I’ve finally got you pegged. She grinned coyley, flicking her eyebrows as she slid a napkin toward him. A phone number was penned over it, and Vegeta was about to toss the rag back across the bar when his fingers felt the pills that were hidden beneath it. Launch watched his internal debate, teasing him with a conniving smile as his fingers slowed, tracing the little beads beneath the fibers. 

“You want more, you call me, eh?” she whispered. 

He knew he should throw them back at her face, tell her she was fucked-up for trying to break him, but suddenly, he felt hot breath over his shoulder as Raditz’s arm circled around him, trying to nab the napkin from his hand. Vegeta felt his eyes grow wide as he subconsciously grabbed up whatever Launch was peddling and stuffed it into his pocket. 

“You’re giving _him_ your number!” Raditz shouted at the girl. “Goddammit, Vegeta, what the fuck!?”

Before he could blink, Raditz kicked his feet out from under him and yanked him to the ground. They were practically under the bartop. His back slammed against the hard planks and Raditz climbed on top, straddling him as he lobbed punches against his head. Being knocked to his back made him lose his breath, but he threw his forearms up to guard his face, only to be met with heavy punches to the gut. 

“Fuck, I didn’t do anything!” Vegeta managed to shout as he blocked the raging asshole’s hits against him, for the most part. He couldn't counter them all, not from the drunk maniac who was twice his size, swinging without remorse. Vegeta was on defense as Raditz held him down, trying to tear his arms away from his face. 

He finally managed to lock one over Vegeta’s head and landed a heavy blow, busting his lip before Kakarot could successfully intervene. He should have stopped there, just let it go, but Vegeta wasn’t one to take a beating and let it slide, and Raditz always stoked his darker impulse like he was begging for it. Besides, he started it. 

As Kakarot tore the dolt from his frame, Vegeta used the opportunity to jump between them. He ripped Raditz from his brother’s arms, charging with a well executed tackle and twist of his weight to toss them both off the deck and topple into the sand. Fuck him for taking him by surprise. Vegeta would always fight back. 

After years of playing prey to Icejin’s brand of abuse, he never once gave in, even when the odds were heavily stacked against him. Finding his stride, Vegeta pinned Raditz into the dirt and pounded his fists against his pretty face, the way he’d done to so many deserving shitheads before, relentlessly throwing his weight over and over with sharp, piercing jabs. Raditz cursed and wailed as Vegeta’s knuckles cracked on contact. Kakarot was at his back, trying his best to pull them apart, but Vegeta couldn’t be moved. The power of his rage was always underestimated by his size, and he railed against his bandmate mercilessly.

Maybe Raditz didn’t deserve it, and Vegeta just found an easy target to project his buried pain, but he didn’t care, and he couldn’t stop himself if he tried. His arm snapped back and forth like a pile driver, and his mind was nothing but hatred boiled over. Raditz was merely one, small contributor to the entire shitshow that comprised his life, and in the moment he was paying for all of it. Vegeta couldn’t feel Kakarot’s arms around his neck, trying to tear him away, much less hear his voice. He was wound tight, a fish on a hook, thrashing wildly against any line of reason, threatening to break it. 

But then, a sharp blast ripped through the air; a shockwave that rattled his nerves, it triggered old instincts causing him to duck in a panic, to hide from the explosive noise and bury his head against the shoulder of the very man he was just fighting.

“Break it up assholes, or I’m claiming self defense.” Vegeta managed to peek up from under his arms to see Launch stuff two more shells into the barrel of a shotgun. 

He didn’t realize how badly he was shaking until he tried to press his arms to stand, scrambling weakly to his feet like a baby deer.

“Fuck this, I’m out!” Vegeta was already walking away before Raditz even sat up. 

His feet trudged over the sand, trying to settle his trembling limbs and chattering teeth, but the further he escaped, pulling away from the people around him, it wasn’t the blood on his lips nor the ache on his ribs that occupied his mind. His fingers in his pocket traced over the little baggie of pills, counting them like treasure. A part of him begged himself to toss them, dump them in the sea if that’s what it would take to clear his head and rid himself of the nagging need that tugged at the pit of his stomach. But that part of him had lost the battle the moment he stuffed the pills into his pocket. 

“Vegeta! Wait up! What the hell is the matter with you?” Kakarot’s voice rang from yards behind him, thank Kami. Even if Kakarot was going to yell at him, a rush of relief flooded through him as he arrived at his side. If he’d gone back to Roshi's alone, he knew where the night would lead. Like a breakwater to his self-destruction, Vegeta was glad for the idiot’s company. 

Even so, he barely slept, staring a hole into the pair of jeans he’d discarded to the floor with the pills inside. His eyes were dry and strained from lack of sleep, but he managed to go the whole night without getting out of bed, counting Kakarot’s snores like sheep. 

Raditz never returned to the studio, the one day they actually needed him for lead vocals, the asshat was MIA. A whole day was wasted waiting around for the fucker, calling his dead cell phone. Less surprisingly, the bar chick, Launch was gone too, as well as her boat from the marina.

“Where the hell is he, Kakarot?” Vegeta shouted, but his brother just shrugged with a stutter of guilt, as if he’d skipped town himself.

Vegeta called Nappa, who also proved useless in finding their missing vocalist, but he did offer a solution. “I don’t know what to tell you besides switch up the vocals. Kakarot can sing Raditz’s parts. If Raditz comes back, he can do the harmonies. Move the hell on! Get it done. I ain’t paying another dime for this shit.”

Kakarot looked at Vegeta and shrugged, “I’m down!” 

It was better this way, Vegeta told himself. Kakarot’s voice was tuned, controlled. The man sipped honied tea all morning rather than whiskey. This was better.

Yet that evening, the moment they had to move on to back-up vocals—the part Kakarot was supposed to play—and Raditz hadn’t surfaced, they were met with an entirely new dilemma. 

“Can’t he sing his own back-up and just tune down a bit?” Vegeta asked. 

Roshi scrunched up his face, sneering below his mustache. “Not in my house. I’m not gonna down tune him. It won’t sound right, and you don’t want that noise, not in this record. You got another vocalist on hand? Do you sing?”

Kakarot instantly grew animated, grabbing Vegeta by the shoulders with a hearty shake. “He does! Vegeta, you should do it!”

“Fuck no. I don’t sing.”

“You do!” Kakarot said. “He does,” he nodded, looking to Roshi. “Come on, Vegeta, Bulma told me you can sing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” What the hell _was_ he talking about? He’d never sung in front of Bulma.

“It’s just back-up. You can do that, right?” 

“Kakarot, you know as well as I do that your parts aren’t just back-up. It’s a god-damn musical, and I’m not singing.” The parts weren’t simple harmonies; they were more often two different sets of lyrics layered over each other in counterpoint, at minimum call-and response, much of the time a full blown duet. He’d be _heard_... a lot. Of course Roshi was right, having Kakarot sing with himself wouldn't sound organic, but even the thought of recording his own vocals made his blood pressure rise and his lungs clamp up. Technically, he could sing, but not in front of people without stroking out. “I won’t do it.”

“Why not? Come on!” Kakarot looked at him with the same pleading eyes Bulma used to get whatever she wanted. “Raditz is on a bender, and you know as well as I do he’s not coming back today, tomorrow, the day after.”

Screw Raditz. They were short on cash, and they’d already overstayed their welcome by three full recording days, paid from their own pocket. They couldn’t wait around for him to return. But there was no way Vegeta was comfortable doing it.

“Isn’t there anyone else? Turles?”

“Just take a few shots, son, take the edge off your nerves.” Roshi held out a bottle of whiskey. 

Vegeta eyed the bottle as his mind raced down two separate tracks, one telling him no fucking way—he’d come so far, six months surviving his inner demons—but the other track was only too happy to be given an excuse that seemed halfway legitimate. He knew which side would win the moment Roshi lifted the barrier on that road. No, the moment he pocketed the pills from that bartender. Opportunity, that was the only thing that truly kept a lid on the person he used to be, and he was quickly rationalizing the fact that he was about to set that person free. “Just give me a minute.”

He locked the bathroom door and pulled the baggie from his pocket, staring down at the little white tablets held inside. He shook one out onto the counter, trying to remember why he wrote them off in the first place. There was never a problem. It’s not why he was arrested; they just happened to drug test him at the time, and he failed. That didn’t mean he had a problem. All those idiots in rehab, they had real problems. Overdosing, selling themselves for a fix, that was never him. He was productive. It would help him be _more_ productive, get him over his current hang-up.

“Fuck it.” Vegeta ground the pill with the butt of his cigarette lighter and chopped it into a fine line. He rolled a paper bill and snorted the entire rail in one fell swoop, feeling the warm burn in his nostril and the metallic taste that dripped down the back of his throat. Almost instantly, his body and mind relaxed as the drug mainlined his system. Anxiety slipped away, gobbled up in a warm flood of synthetic euphoria, like waking from a bad dream. Kami, this shit was magic, and he was stupid for ever trying to wade through everyone’s bullshit without it. Now, he was awake and alive.

When he found his way back into the control room, he grabbed the bottle from the old man’s console and brought it to his lips. “Let’s get this over with.”

“You don’t have to, Vegeta.” Kakarot eyed him suspiciously as his tipped the bottle, and more than a few shots ran down the back of his throat, easy, like water. He passed the bottle back to their producer with a ragged sigh and shook his head, feeling the hot sensation of alcohol coat his stomach. 

“Don’t worry, moron. I was never straightedge. My virginity’s not on your conscience. Just don’t fucking watch me.” 

Kakarot’s expression was warped with a mix of confusion and relief as Roshi led him away. 

The old man directed Vegeta into the tiny vocal booth, even turned the mic around to face the back before he placed him to stand in front of a pop filter almost as big as his face. 

“Don’t worry kid. Jim Morrison faced the back the first few times too.” Roshi said, handing Vegeta a large set of over-ear headphones. Even with the oxy, it was hard to suppress the edge on his anxiety as Roshi patted him on the shoulder and retreated to the board. “Wail it boy!” the old man exclaimed over the comm.

Shit, this was nerve-wracking, the two of them staring holes into his back through a few panes of glass, worse, listening to his voice clear as day in the control room, noticing every little hiccup. 

“You ready?” Kakarot’s voice chimed through the headphones. 

“Just play the damn song.”

The comps played, and Vegeta was forced to sing along with his eyes pinched shut. The vocals were at least on an octave he comfortable with, but most of the songs were heavy on vocals, meeting Kakarot’s tit for tat, like they were singing a duet. And all of them, especially when they got into the harmonizations at the climax of each song, he was forced to fry his chords, layering over Kakarot’s voice like a sonic weapon, screaming over his clean vox with a burning roar.

The men just smiled beyond the panes of glass, nodding their heads. “Shit, Vegeta, I think we should keep this going! You and me! Raditz can play bass!”

“This is never happening again, Kakarot.”

“Aw, come on! I think we sound good together.”

They listened to the tracks back in the control room, and Kakarot was right. Their voices did meld well, better than his and his own brother’s. Still, he wasn’t jumping at the idea of switching out the line up and singing in front of an audience. At least it was over, and he’d get more royalties the more parts he recorded. If this record sold, Raditz wouldn’t earn a damn penny. That was worth it.

“Job well done, boys!” Roshi exclaimed. 

They listened to the rough comps of the record, passing a bottle of whiskey casually, victoriously between them. A celebration, Vegeta told himself as the familiar heady loop of drunkenness infiltrated his mind. It sounded good, straight off the board without any finesse. Once it was mixed and mastered, hell, they might just have something worth selling. Vegeta sunk further into the couch next to Kakarot, trying to focus his foggy mind on the tracks that played around his and Roshi’s giddy commotion, whooping loudly at every part they found particularly good.

It was strange, settling into the cushions, feeling the boozy haze tunnel his vision around the other two gabbing at the console. He didn’t feel half bad, not physically. He got drunk way too fast, and combined with the painkillers, he felt light, floaty, ready for anything. When Kakarot jumped on him, shrieking like a kid on a sugar high about a trip to the bar, Vegeta was only too ready to follow him. He took Kakarot’s hand that tugged him off the couch, up the stairs, and out of the basement studio into the crisp, salty air.

Kakarot led him down the beach toward the bars and restaurants. In his hazy state of mind, he was barely able to register the scene around him, his vision lagging with every movement of his head. Their regular spot, the outdoor wharf where Launch usually worked, was crowded with locals and the occasional off-season tourists. Kakarot hung on him, his arm coiled like a leash around his neck, laughing drunkenly with whatever conversations sprung up around them. Vegeta swore he was having a good time. Everything felt fine, before everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone is curious what "album" they're recording in my stupid head, it's most definitely TBS's "Tell All Your Friends," because 16 years later, I'm still that obsessed.


	9. Broken Down in Bars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) for the beta read, and GreatRageShortLegs for the chemistry tips. I'm sure you know both of these lovely people's art and/or writing talent, but just in case, please check out them out on Tumblr! [Jadefyre](http://jadefyre.ca/) and [GreatRageShortLegs](https://greatrageshortlegs.tumblr.com/)

Since Vegeta left for recording, Bulma felt gutted and bored—her usual pep replaced by an odd restlessness that was difficult to navigate, as if her boundless energy had commuted to nerves and couldn’t find a release. She tried to remember what her usual routine had been before she met him. There were concerts and video games, but without the guys around, those things seemed hardly enticing. Chi-Chi didn’t share the same musical tastes and was terrible at games that weren’t part of the Mario Bros. franchise. 

Studying for midterms at Senzu Bean was a chore, and with that barista creeping on her from behind the counter, those visits proved more uncomfortable than productive. Then there was her father’s lab. Tinkering with electronics or dangerous chemicals usually served as Bulma’s brand of therapy. But the last time she trekked over to her parents, she nearly burned the place down when her mind flitted off into Vegetaland, accidentally knocking a dish of sodium onto her bench. After she mistook a container of water for alcohol to dispose of the highly combustible metal and nearly lost her eyebrows when the bench ignited in a hot, crackling blaze—earning her an earful from her father’s technicians—she left the space embarrassed and more miserable than when she’d arrived.

One night, she even forced herself to attend one of Yamcha’s playoff games, hoping that enough time had passed to cast a line on some form of friendship. But as she watched the first two innings high up in the bleachers, just like old times, that odd anxiousness hit a peak. The moment Yamcha realized she was there, tossing her a small wave from the dugout, she dipped. Unable to access the headspace she needed to talk to him, as if the drive that stored her memories of him had been corrupted, she felt guilty that he acknowledged her with something friendlier than a middle finger. 

Vegeta was a virus that invaded every kami-damned corner of space in her head, and she let him, even welcomed him. For more than a month, she allowed Vegeta to weave his way deep into her consciousness, and without any real discussion on what they meant to each other, she was finding it unbearable to be apart. She was useless, wholly and pathetically whipped on the stupid guy, and nothing seemed to hold her interest without him. 

They’d spent almost a month living together, barely leaving each others presence save for her classes and his practice. Every minute with Vegeta felt like tipping off the big dip on a roller coaster, her stomach constantly jumping and twisting itself into knots every time he looked at her with those smoldering black eyes. As melodramatic as it sounded, she felt like an army wife with her beau at war, and the worst part of it all was Vegeta’s inability to maintain a solid thread of communication. She tried calling, but he never answered. She tried texting, but he barely responded, and when he did, it was with a word or two that was hardly comforting, usually some variation of _What now? I’m busy_. Goku was at least semi-responsive, letting her know that it wasn’t her, that Vegeta was just hyper-concentrated or stressing out or both. All of which Goku claimed he had a handle on.

On top of all that, Chi-Chi was a miserable mess. Everything her roommate had to say was a negative complaint. Goku really fucked her friend up, and Bulma was finding it hard to comfort her with the unyielding support Chi-Chi required. Quite frankly, she was being a debbie downer, and Bulma was sick of her moping, but she could never say that to Chi-Chi’s face.

Her roommate was sitting at the counter when Bulma came home from class, and as expected, she was in a sour mood. Ignoring Bulma’s greeting as she came through the door, Chi-Chi opted to sulk silently over a pile of schoolwork. 

Bulma rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue before she went to ignoring Chi-Chi right back, sifting through the mail on the counter. A large, official-looking envelope had arrived addressed to her with the gold crest of North City University embossed across the front. Bulma tore it open. It was an acceptance letter to the university’s prestigious biochemistry program. Funny, she hadn’t even applied, and they were asking her to join their ranks. Scanning through the details, Bulma realized that not only was NCU offering her a placement in their lucrative program, but they were going to _pay her_ to be a part of it. A grant and a stipend awaited. All she had to do was say yes. As flattering as it was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to move to North for a program she wasn’t ready to claim as a career.

“What is it?” Chi-Chi asked as Bulma tossed the letter aside.

“NCU wants me for their Ph.D. program in biochem,” Bulma sighed and picked up her vibrating phone, hoping for Vegeta, but it was only her lab partner. With a grumble, she ignored the call.

“You’re not going to do it? Didn’t you say that was the best school for chemistry programs?” 

“Yeah. I just… I don’t want to move there. It’s cold. And honestly, I’m not sure biochem is my thing.”

“Bulma, what is your thing?” Chi-Chi bit out. She dropped her head to her hand, elbow resting on the counter as she stared at Bulma with her judgy, narrowed eyes. “I’m just curious because it seems like you’ve been tossing a lot of acceptance letters to exclusive programs in the bin.” 

“I dunno,” Bulma shrugged. She couldn’t pin down exactly what was keeping her from choosing a career path, other than the fact that she didn’t _need_ to settle down yet, and when it came to academics, she liked playing the field. As privileged as that was, she couldn’t help how she felt. She was young. What was the point in giving up her freedom prematurely if she didn’t have to? Decades lay ahead of her to dedicate to a career. She was having fun, socializing and taking her time, rather than jumping into something she wasn’t certain she wanted to pursue long term, along with missing out on the best years of her life. She wished she’d taken the same approach with Yamcha. “I’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.”

“Well, lucky you,” Chi-Chi scoffed, turning back to her textbook. 

Bulma felt a little bad. Chi-Chi was as bright as they came, but she didn’t have the luxury of testing out majors, much less be sought after by the law program she was currently pursuing. Tough competition combined with an intense application process—not to mention a slew of public and private loans—was Chi-Chi’s reality. That kind of pressure was hard for Bulma to commiserate, but she tried to be helpful, at least in the only way she knew how.

“Come on Cheech. We gotta get you out of the house. Let's go out tonight!”

“It’s a weeknight,” Chi-Chi responded dryly without looking up.

“So? You’ve been sulking for weeks. You need this! Drinking, dancing… Please! You might meet somebody.” Bulma smiled coyly and flicked her eyebrows, hoping Chi-Chi would lighten up.

“I don’t want to meet somebody,” Chi-Chi grumbled.

“Yeah, Cheech, I know, and I’m sorry.” 

Bulma did feel especially sorry about that. She’d introduced Chi-Chi to Goku. Even as different as they were, she thought they would be a perfect match, but there was more to it than that, apparently. Goku dumping her was never something Bulma envisioned happening. Breaking up seemed like something Chi-Chi would initiate. Though Bulma wanted nothing more than for Goku and Chi-Chi to get back together, from what she discerned from him, Goku was probably better off focusing on himself for a while. 

The way it all went down, Goku was acting like he had no redeemable qualities. Overnight, the confident, creative optimist she knew all her life was reduced to a sad pile of self-pity, like Chi-Chi sucked-up everything that he had going for him and told him it was pointless. Though that’s not how Chi-Chi viewed the situation. 

Her roommate seemed to comprehend that she bruised Goku’s ego, and she clearly felt awful, but Chi-Chi’s stubbornness sometimes got the better of her. At the same time, stress and pressure immobilized her, turning the girl into a bitter stone, and Bulma could do nothing about it, being torn between the two of them. Her friends were on hiatus, that’s what Chi-Chi said, and Bulma was forced to straddle her friendships as consequence. 

“Then girls night out, you and me. I can’t take you sulking anymore! I miss my happy Chi-Chi!” Bulma wrapped her arms around Chi-Chi’s neck and kissed her cheek. “Please, let's get out of this apartment!”

“Fine!” Chi-Chi agreed, snapping her textbook shut. “But we’re home by midnight. I have an econ test tomorrow afternoon.”

Bulma squealed her agreement as she hopped up and down, her arms tightening around Chi-Chi’s throat.

***

Chi-Chi regretted her decision the moment they entered the dingy bar. Despite Bulma claiming she wanted to cheer her up with a girl’s night out, she dragged her to Duffs, a basement heavy metal bar that smelled like bleach and stale beer. The music was so loud, Chi-Chi could barely hear herself think.

“Turles is here!” Bulma shrieked and ran off before Chi-Chi could register her words. She didn’t follow her roommate to chat up Goku’s cousin. Instead, Chi-Chi opted to grab a drink at the bar alone. At this point, socializing, especially with his relative, required a heavy buzz. 

“You can put that on my tab.” A voice, sugary and smooth as honey to her ear drifted over from the next barstool. 

Chi-Chi turned to take in the tall, attractive man. Though he was dressed in the same dark graphic tees and slim-cut jeans she was used to by now, he had a polished look about him, almost pretty in a way, like a model: high cheekbones, amber colored eyes, and silky green hair tied back in a neat ponytail. 

“Cheers,” he said, extending his own cocktail.

Unenthusiastically, she clinked her glass with his. Despite feeling flattered that a gorgeous guy was buying her a drink within minutes of her arrival, she wasn’t in a talkative mood and hoped he wouldn’t try to engage her as retribution for the free drink. If that was the case, she’d have just bought the damn thing herself.

“A guy buys you a drink, the least you could do is tell him your name.”

“Sorry,” Chi-Chi said, rolling her eyes. Of course, she couldn’t get out of it now and had to play polite. “Shitty day, I guess. My name’s Chi-Chi, and thanks for the drink, but really, you didn’t have to.”

“My pleasure, Chi-Chi. I’m Zarbon.” He extended his hand. “I’m curious what’s got a beautiful girl like you down.”

“Pffff,” Chi-Chi huffed hard enough to fluff her bangs as she reluctantly shook his soft hand. What had her down? There were so many things. She took a long gulp from her glass and glanced over to Bulma. Her friend’s stupid smile, chatting up Turles with her famous, animated style, practically hopping up and down as she spoke, annoyed Chi-Chi more than usual. Maybe because a stranger had noticed her mood and was asking her about her troubles before her self-centered best friend managed to, Chi-Chi found herself dishing to the prettyboy. “I got a rejection letter today from a law program I applied to. Needless to say, my dad will be more disappointed than I am.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Chi-Chi. Parents can be so unreasonable. It’s hard for them to understand that times have changed. It’s not as easy for today’s youth as it was for them.” The guy circled a finger around the rim of his glass as he spoke. There was a refined quality to his Northern accent. Old money etiquette, like years of fancy prep school polished his voice into soft, syrupy tones that floated from his lips like music. 

“These days you suffer endless debt for little promise of reward. Slaving away for wages that can’t possibly cover the inflated costs of living. But you seem like a smart young woman. I’m sure you’ll find your way,” he said, casually looking up from his drink to meet her gaze. 

It was strange. Despite their warm, golden hues, there was a cold, peculiar quality in his eyes that was almost spooky. His entire demeanour felt a little too charming. Unlike the come-ons of college boys her age, Zarbon was buttering her up with an observant, expert attention to detail.

Regardless, Ted Bundy here did have a point. The youth of her generation were burdened with inflation into the stratosphere when it came to education, housing, and health care—on top of stagnated wages and a piss poor job market, the future wasn’t looking too bright. Thank Kami she met Bulma, or she’d have to work two jobs on top of school to afford rent anywhere near campus. It was partially the reason she didn’t put up much of a fuss over Vegeta moving in. Thanks to Bulma’s parents, she wasn’t paying rent either, so she could hardly fault the guy for mooching.

“What do you do, Zarbon? I assume imparting wisdom to college girls isn’t a full-time profession,” Chi-Chi said. She guessed he was around Nappa’s age, early thirties, which added to the creep factor that he was hitting on a nineteen-year-old.

“I make my own way just fine,” he mused. “Music never seems to fail with the rest of the economy if you know how to work the system. Like drugs and booze, entertainment is an escape from reality, and that’s always going to sell. Maybe more so in hard times.”

“Another musician,” Chi-Chi rolled her eyes. “You’re telling me you make money doing that? Because I know a lot of people like you that can’t afford a decent pair of pants.”

Zarbon chuckled coldly. “Well, you need both talent and a mind make a name. Music is a business like any other. Not just anybody becomes famous.”

“So you’re famous?” Chi-Chi quirked a brow as she scoffed, “Well, I haven’t heard of you, _Zarbon_.”

The man scrunched his face in offense. “Maybe you haven’t heard of me personally, but surely you’ve heard of Icejin.”

“Icejin!” Chi-Chi’s eyes bugged from her skull, and she was surprised to feel herself growing excited. Okay, maybe he wasn’t a serial killer, he was just one of those people that got weird with fame. “You’re in Icejin!? What a small world! Vegeta’s my roommate!”

As excited as she was to make a random connection, the man’s face dropped into a strange scowl, curling his lip as he spat, “Vegeta? He lives with you? You’re kidding?”

“No! He’s dating my roommate, over there,” Chi-Chi gestured toward Bulma. “Why? Are you guys still mad that he quit or something?”

“Oh, princess, is that what he told you, that he quit?” Zarbon laughed cruelly as he scanned Bulma over her shoulder before he whipped his golden gaze back to hers. The mention of Vegeta seemed to vaporize his cool, calculated posture. He sat back on his stool and took a drink, a nasty sneer stolen over his pretty features. 

“We threw that little brat out, but we aren’t mad about it. Baby was never important. If I know him as I think I do, I imagine your new roomie hasn’t been forthcoming about his past with us. This could take some time.” Zarbon turned to the bartender and ordered another round.

***

Bulma made her way back to Chi-Chi, happy to see her mopey friend chatting it up with an attractive stranger, tossing her long mane over her shoulder as she giggled in conversation. Maybe she’d get over Goku sooner than she thought.

“Hi there,” Bulma interrupted and extended a hand to the guy. “I’m Chi-Chi’s best friend, so if you’re trying to woo my girl, you better woo me too.”

“Woo you too?” the guy smiled his amusement. He was even more attractive up close, the perfect symmetry of his grin stretched wide below the golden glow of his eyes. “Seems like you’ve already been wooed by my old comrade,” he winked.

Chi-Chi answered Bulma’s question before she had to ask it. “He plays guitar in Icejin!” she squealed, nearly toppling off her stool as she grabbed Bulma’s shoulder to save herself. Kami, how drunk did Chi-Chi get in an hour? 

“Been taking shots, Cheech?” Bulma asked. 

“Of course not!” she scoffed, glaring at Bulma under an angry flutter of her long lashes. Just one empty glass sat next to her friend’s half guzzled drink.

“What’s your name?” Bulma questioned as she hoisted her friend securely back onto her seat. Something about this guy was unsettling, but besides the plastic smile, she couldn’t place the creepy vibe she was sensing from him. The way he spoke, it was like he was acting, trying to evoke a particular reaction from her with his silky tones. 

“I’m Zarbon,” he said, latching to her hand with a limp grip, staring over the tops of her knuckles as he kissed them. His eyes twinkled with an air of power that seemed to know what buttons to press to mess with her, like some sinister game. 

“You mean to tell me our baby hasn’t talked about me, or us at all?” he asked, still holding her hand in his cold palm. “Damn, you spend nearly a decade with a person, and it amounts to nothing. What a shame.” Zarbon tisked, staring at the ceiling with a dramatic shake of his head. “I shouldn’t be surprised, he was never adept at communication, not with words, anyway. So tell me, what’s little Veggie’s game now? Still chasing delinquent rich girls for pills and powders?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bulma said with more confidence than was deserved. She tore her hand back to cross her arms. 

Vegeta wouldn’t talk about his break-up with the band. In fact, Vegeta wouldn’t talk about much of anything that wasn’t superficial. Despite spending nearly a month glued to the guy, he hadn’t revealed much about himself at all. He skirted those conversations with distractions, like sex and sleep, food and video games. He was an enigma still, even in her own home. And now he was gone. During the past two weeks at Roshi’s, he responded to every tenth text like it was a burden. 

“I just mean, it’s funny that you don’t seem his type,” Zarbon drolled. “You’re not blonde, for one thing. So maybe you’re rich? He does love to play the part of the pool boy. But who can blame him, he’s as poor as one.”

“So what? Money doesn’t define character, you know. He came from nothing!” Bulma knew her friends weren’t as well off as she was. It was unspoken; she took care of them because she could, and she didn’t want a pat on the back over it. It was her parents money, not hers in the first place. She was no different from Vegeta or Chi-Chi or Goku in that regard. Zarbon was fishing.

“Oh, I’m not talking shit. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved the little twerp,” he said, placing his palm to his chest with a soft pat. 

Bulma narrowed her eyes, noticing the french manicure on his unnaturally, long fingernails. If the other Icejin members were anything like Zarbon, Bulma could understand Vegeta’s revulsion whenever they were brought up in conversation. Everything about him irked her, from his voice, smoothing out pet names for Vegeta that were borderline pedophilic, to his smile that hardened like a mask the longer he was forced to wear it. He shrugged and carried on, “Just doing my due diligence to save another girl from pointless heartbreak.”

As much as Bulma wanted to write Zarbon off as a revenge-seeking psychopath, there was something about his claims that reminded her of Nappa’s warning in the shop so many weeks ago. 

_When this all goes to shit_ , that’s what Nappa said, as if it was inevitable. 

“Okay, Zarbon, I’ll bite. Pills and powders? What the hell are you talking about?”

Zarbon raised his hands in a placating gesture. His brows lifted without cracking the porcelain veneer of his mask. “Believe me, the last thing I want is to intercede. I haven’t seen Veggie in six months, not since the whole melodrama. Maybe he’s changed. I hear rehab works wonders. But all the same, I’ve known him since he was a little street urchin, and he’s gotten quite the reputation over the years. Finds girls with access to their daddy’s money to feed his habits.”

“Habits? Care to elaborate?” As far as she knew from living with him, and from what Nappa once insinuated, Vegeta was sober and always had been. Nothing so far indicated that Zarbon’s claims held any validity. He’d never asked her for money, and certainly not drugs. 

Zarbon sighed heavily, batting his lashes as he pretended that the whole conversation was a bore. “Habits, as in anything and everything. He’s prone to downers, wastes a lot of money on them if you ask me. Mostly opiates or barbiturates—baby thinks he’s high class; he likes prescriptions, but you can never be too sure with an addict. They’re unpredictable. Run out of your drug of choice, and you’ll do anything to get high. Violence, for instance, was Veggie’s mode of operandi. I take it he never told you how he was escorted from the band in handcuffs?”

“Bulma! Seee!” Chi-Chi slurred. Her eyelids dipped to half mast. “I told you he was a psycho!”

Whether or not the creep had a vendetta, Zarbon’s information still piqued her interest. Bulma wanted to question him further, but Chi-Chi was falling out of her chair. That deserved some attention. In less than an hour, her friend went from stone cold sober to slurring her words. There was no way she’d drank enough to accomplish that feat. Though Bulma suspected what was happening, she couldn’t prove it or call the guy out. Getting Chi-Chi out of the bar was the foremost thing on her mind. 

“Chi-Chi, we’re going home now,” Bulma said. She wrapped an arm around her friend and tried to pull her from the barstool, hoping to get them both out of this situation without any drama, but she was too far gone.

“Why? We juss got here!” Chi-Chi cried. She grabbed ahold of the bartop with a white-knuckled resistance.

“Please, Cheech, trust me,” Bulma begged and pulled, watching Zarbon from the corner of her eye as he pursed his pretty lips and sipped his drink. 

“No! Bulma, you’re being a bitch!” Chi-Chi screamed, drawing the attention the patrons around them. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“If the girl wants to stay, let her stay,” Zarbon calmly chimed.

That did it. Bulma couldn’t put a cap on her irritation with the sleazeball and felt no shame in rousing looks from the bar’s other patrons as she screamed, “Fuck you! I should have _you_ picked up in handcuffs!” She pulled her phone from her pocket with her free hand, as if pretending to call the cops would prove threatening. 

To some extent it did. Zarbon’s expression suddenly shifted from polished ambivalence into a monsterous sneer. “Oh please, bitch. For what?”

“Everything okay here, Bulma?” Turles’ voice rang sternly at her back. Whether it was her threat or Turles’ towering presence, Zarbon waved a white flag with a cool toss of his hand and spun to face to the bar.

“No!” Bulma cried. “Chi-Chi and I are going home. We need a ride.”

“I don’t want to go yet!” Chi-Chi shouted. “I was having a conversation, Bulma. And then you came to steal attention, as usual. You always do this!”

Turles had to carry Chi-Chi out of the the bar, tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of angry kittens, kicking and screaming, and threw her in the cab. The whole way home Chi-Chi wailed against them both with angry, teary vehemence.

“Chi-Chi, listen to me! He put something in your drink. You’re not being yourself!” Bulma wailed, but her friend wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t possibly listen. She was out of her kami-damned mind, screaming at Bulma with poisonous words.

“You’re a fucking bitch, Bulma! You get everything, and you don’t even care. You turn it down. Like today, NCU, you threw it away. You could have Goku too if you wanted, you know that? He told me he loves you. Do you know what that’s like?”

“If that’s what he said, he doesn’t mean it the way you think. You’re misinterpreting him. Look, I’m not going to indulge you right now because I know you’re not being yourself. _I love you too!_ Do you hear me? That’s all I have to say tonight.” 

Damn, roofies were one hell of a drug. As she tried to turn deaf ears on the rest of Chi-Chi’s diatribe, as hard as it was to ignore, she found her fingers shooting text after text to Vegeta’s cell, nothing incriminating, just stupid reminders to the fool, telling him that she existed, that she missed him, that the line was open if he wanted to talk. Of course, he didn’t reply to a single one.

With some effort, Turles helped Bulma get Chi-Chi to bed. He was sweet about the whole thing too, calling his pregnant baby mama to let her know the situation. Kami, the guy had done a one-eighty since high school. Far from the arrogant skirt-chasing, substance-abusing adolescent he used to be—flaunting those characteristics like they were admirable—now Turles was serious, Nappa’s second in command at the stores with the intention to provide for his newfound family, being honest with his girlfriend about what he was up to at midnight in the girls’ apartment. Bulma hated putting him in that position, but Turles didn’t bat an eye. Bulma thanked him for noticing that she and Chi-Chi were in trouble. Without him, who knew where the night would have led. That Icejin creep certainly had a game in mind. She had Turles call Goku too, rather than doing it herself. She didn’t want to attract Chi-Chi’s ire if she contacted him directly, not after the things her roommate accused her of tonight, but Goku didn’t answer.


	10. Wrecked and Jealous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, thanks a million [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) for the read. Also, as usual, last minute changes happened, so there's probably some turdy mistakes.

The cold sunk deep into his bones, and he was sure that his stiff fingers would shatter like icicles if he tried to bend them. Goku cracked open an eye. Pristine white sand stretched out for miles in his field of vision, uninterrupted save for one dark hurdle: Vegeta’s black coif lay listless at his side. What the fuck had they gotten up to? 

As he laid there, meditating on the rhythmic crash of waves, he tried to remember, but Goku didn’t remember much once they hit the bar. Just fragments filtered in—of Vegeta mostly. He was wild with a boundless, fiery energy, taking shots with strangers, arm wrestling for money. Kami, Vegeta even played along with some guy’s bet that he couldn’t open a beer bottle with his teeth and nearly tore his lip ring from his face on a bottlecap. He was nothing like the serious, sullen person Goku was used to. In the moment, he reminded him of Raditz. But it wasn’t just Vegeta, Goku’s own actions reminded him of his reckless brother.

Though the past few weeks provided an escape from thoughts of Chi-Chi, they couldn’t distract him completely, and he felt worse for letting them feed an irresponsible bender. But he couldn’t help that every other minute, he thought about her. It was almost worse being trapped in that studio writing songs; they were all about her—moody melodies that drudged up all the mixed feelings he couldn’t seem to express to her with words. It wasn’t until last night, when he was blind drunk, that she was finally buried in the back of his head for one evening—granted, so was everything else. 

Though he’d been drunk plenty of times before, waking up without any recollection of how the night ended with him and Vegeta passed-out on the frigid beach in the middle of October was a bit unnerving. He wasn’t normally that heavy of drinker. Physically, he felt like garbage, and mentally, well… he wasn’t prepared to unpack those feelings just yet. They’d sit like rocks in his gut until he found the wherewithal to chip away at their meaning. 

First things first, one knuckle at a time, he bent and flexed his joints, warming his blood to regain enough circulation that he could push himself to all fours. Goku crawled over to Vegeta and shook him by the shoulder. “Vegeta, wake up,” he croaked through his parched throat.

Fine grains of sand covered their clothes, skin, and hair. The crispy texture of Vegeta’s shirt under his palm and his own stiff attire suggested that at some point, they’d gone swimming in the chilly water like a couple of morons.

But Vegeta didn’t stir. He was cold, dead weight under Goku’s palm, causing whatever hangover he was suffering to quickly tuck tail as he scanned his friend’s pale pallor. 

“Shit... No no no.” It wasn’t that cold, not like those stories of people passing out in sub-zero. He was fine. It was fifty degrees, at least. Vegeta was just out, being his surly self when it came to waking up each morning. He just wasn’t used to drinking like this. He was fine! Those were the thoughts Goku frantically entertained as he climbed on top of Vegeta—his heart beating wildly as adrenaline surged his veins with a current as strong as the ocean’s waves—and he began to shake him violently by his shirt, screaming, “Wake the fuck up!” 

A barely audible curse fell flat from his friend’s bloody lips—his usual Saiyan curse, the same one he spat half asleep most mornings that Goku assumed meant _fuck off_. 

“Dammit! Fucking hell, Vegeta, you scared the shit outta me!” Goku cried, rolling off him. Kami, if that wasn’t a hell of a way to cure a hangover. 

His heart was still racing as Vegeta slowly reanimated. Without opening his eyes, his friend just rolled to press himself from the ground and immediately hurled between his shaking arms. He wasn’t used to drinking like that, and Goku felt like shit for letting Roshi egg him on, for egging Vegeta on himself once they got going. 

Ignoring the throbbing pain that beat in his skull like he’d been struck in the face with a tire iron, Goku wrapped his arm around Vegeta’s waist and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, buddy. We’re going home today.” 

While suffering his own dismal coma was bad enough, dragging a zombie-like Vegeta nearly a mile back to the house was added torture. For some reason, he couldn’t shake the guilt, like he’d broken a toy he wasn’t meant to play with in the first place. 

He managed to get Vegeta upstairs and dropped him in the bathtub. Drunk as he was, he could only mumble feebly in Saiygo as Goku stripped off his clothes. Goku cursed himself as he struggled to pull the tight girl jeans from his ankles. After tipping the shower head to let a scalding stream of water rain over him, Goku opted to say. Something about leaving Vegeta wasted like that alone with running water felt like bad parenting. 

As he picked up each article of clothing to shake out the sand over the tiles, keeping an eye on Vegeta while he thawed, something dropped from the pocket of his jeans. Goku lifted the little baggie of white tablets from the floor, turning it over in his palm. For a fleeting second, one dumb moment that tried to puzzle benefit of doubt, he thought that maybe… maybe they were fucking breath mints or simple ibuprofen. But when he glanced back at Vegeta who was passed out again, his head tipped against the side of the tub, completely unaware of his surroundings, Goku realized he was kidding himself. He folded Vegeta’s clothes and set the baggie of pills on top, calling him out without words. After dealing with Raditz’s vices his entire life, a shitshow he had zero power to control, he wasn’t prepared to confront Vegeta, at least not in his current state of mind. 

After pulling him from the tub and helping him to bed, Goku retreated to a scalding hot shower of his own before he attempted to pack up their arsenal of equipment into Roshi’s car. Roshi helped intermittently, but for the most part, Goku was on his own, hauling gear and luggage up and down the stairs. As late as they woke on the beach, combined with Vegeta’s comatose condition, they were forced to catch the last ferry back to West City. Despite giving him the day to recover, Vegeta was still a mess through the trip back to the mainland. Saying nothing about the pills, ignoring the fact that Goku found them, Vegeta spent the trip home bent over the side of the boat, dry heaving in the cool evening air.

The sun was setting, turning the sky into a smear of vibrant, reddish colors. It was pretty enough to notice, and he wished Chi-Chi was there, enjoying the view with his chin pressed against the top of her head, breathing in the coconutty smell of her shampoo with his arms wrapped around her. Instead, he was rubbing a hand between Vegeta’s heaving shoulders, trying not to throw up himself.

“I’m sorry,” Goku said. 

“Drop it, Kakarot.” Vegeta plopped his head to his forearms that were braced against the railing, wiping spit on the sleeves of his hoodie.

Was he losing his mind? Everyone believed that Vegeta was straightedge, for months. That was his gimmick. Even Nappa played along. It was odd, Vegeta suddenly going on an all-night, boozy bender with a stash of pills in his pocket that left him hurling over the side of a ferry. “Clearly, you’re not straightedge? Why the hell was everyone saying that?” 

“No fucking clue.” Vegeta groaned. “People will believe anything.”

“But why did you play along?”

“Served a purpose for a minute,” Vegeta wrapped his arms tightly around his head and mumbled. “Nobody bothered me at parties.” 

“Kind of extreme. You’re tellin’ me you were pretending to be sober to avoid parties?” Goku’s brows lifted with his scepticism. There was no way that was true. He was hiding something. Goku was determined to try to drag it out of him, but Vegeta turned his face to rest his cheek on his arms, drawing his eyes to Goku’s own. The man knew he’d found the found the pills; Goku made sure that Vegeta knew it when he set the baggie on top of his folded clothes, so there was no point in playing dumb. 

Vegeta licked his lips, as if he understood the fact and was just trying to find the right words to speak. Vegeta was going to tell Goku a secret without prompting, he realized, and he fought the urge to twitch the smallest muscles in his face, afraid the slightest move would break his trust. 

“I ran into a little legal problem back in North, and I’m just trying to climb out of it. That’s all. I’ve been on tour since I was fifteen; I’m not straightedge, you moron. I’m the opposite. But that’s between you and me, Kakarot. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, man. Like you said, I’m on your side.” Goku meant it, wholeheartedly, but he struggled to maintain eye contact as Vegeta basically admitted to being an addict. Shit, Goku encouraged him to drink. 

“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have-

“Save it, Kakarot. It’s none of your business, and I know what I’m doing. I don’t have a problem like you think. I never did. I managed to get myself arrested at the wrong time. That’s all. I went through the motions because the court made me, but I’m not an addict. I proved it for six fucking months.”

“It’s fine,” Goku said, knowing it wasn’t. He wasn’t stupid. Academics, book-smarts, sure that shit flew over his head, but growing up with Raditz, Goku recognized a liar when he saw one. “You should tell Bulma.”

“Tell her what? There’s nothing to tell,” Vegeta snapped.

Goku pinched his lips together, debating how to proceed. Vegeta was clearly in denial. All the signs pointed to trouble, but who was he to tell Bulma if Vegeta refused? He felt grateful enough that Vegeta’s secret was at least partially revealed to him out of trust. He couldn’t betray him now, or he’d never be forgiven. Vegeta’s trust was the one card Goku held that could maybe make a difference, one he’d lost with Raditz a long time ago. Undercutting him with rash actions and desperate force would only make things worse. Time was what he needed, time to see how this played out, time to think. He wished he’d had that luxury with Raditz, but he was young and idealistic, confronting his brother with anger, an unswerving disappointment and lack of understanding that only deepened the rift between them, irreparably. That mistake, he wasn’t willing to repeat. Yet, in Vegeta’s case, there was Bulma to consider too. Hiding a secret like that from his best friend would eventually eat him alive. Whatever fragile bond he held with Vegeta couldn’t possibly last with Bulma on the other end of the equation. Lying to her, even an omission, was an impossible long game. They told each other everything since they were kids.

“At the very least, tell her what you just told me,” Goku suggested.

Vegeta just frowned and dropped his head back into his arms, shutting out the world around him as the boat slowed and docked at the city terminal.

Raditz’s van was still in the parking lot, and thankfully Goku had keys. He drove Vegeta back to the girls’ apartment, glad that he denied his request to help carry two guitars and his personal effects upstairs. Facing Bulma was one thing, but seeing Chi-Chi, especially with the brutal hangover he’d been doing his best to ignore all day, was more than he could currently manage. 

Vegeta struggled to corral his luggage into the first set of doors. Realizing he’d lost his keys somewhere on the beach, he buzzed the apartment from below. 

Bulma’s voice rang cheerily over the comm, “Ahoy-hoy! Randy’s sperm Bank. You squeeze it, we freeze it. How can I help you?”

Kami, the woman was ridiculous. “Uh… I lost my keys,” Vegeta replied.

“VEGETA!” she screamed at a pitch that crackled the speaker. The buzzer she pressed to unlock the door blared at the same instant, and Vegeta felt his brain swell inside his skull. It would bleed out his ears if he had to listen to this noise for another second. He whipped the door open and thrust his guitars and himself inside as fast as he could manage in his condition. 

The doorman at the front desk offered a smile over the top of his latest novel as Vegeta waited for the elevator to descend, glaring impatiently at the blinking lights that tracked the elevator down to the lobby. Another hot shower couldn’t come soon enough to wash away the smell of seawater, booze and bile. He didn’t remember anything after the first drink at the bar, but whatever he’d done left him pained, ill and two pills short of what he remembered owning; a bloody scab had formed around his lip ring, not to mention the bruises from his fight with Raditz. He was a kami-damned mess. The last light blinked on as the elevator binged, and the doors opened, but before his sluggish mind had time to respond, Vegeta was tackled to the floor by a blur of blue. 

“What the fuck, woman!?” She’d knocked him clean to his back, landing on top of his already bruised rib cage and sending a guitar case to slip his grip and skid ten feet across the tiles. 

“Hi!” she grinned, her face hovering an inch from his own, completely unaffected by his pained scowl. She kissed him, and Vegeta felt a small release of tension as the familiar taste of her lips and the flowery scent of her hair hit his senses. “Kami, you stink worse than that van!” she said, tearing herself from his frame with a scrunched nose.

“Come on.” Bulma hopped to her feet, pulling him up by the hand. She picked up one of the guitar cases from the floor and they boarded the elevator. Bulma wrapped her arms tightly around his waist and buried her head in his shoulder as they shot toward the top floor. “Did you miss me?” she chimed. 

Maybe he did. But those two weeks on the islands felt like time travel in an alternate universe. It was difficult to untangle the mess feelings, and in the moment, he wanted nothing but to sleep and disappear. Vegeta didn’t have the desire, much less the energy to answer her. He merely plopped his cheek against her head, which he hoped would be enough to shut her up, but this was Bulma. He could sew her lips together and she’d still find a way to annoy him. Just like her mother, question after question sprang from her pretty mouth, and he wrapped an arm around her face to cover it with his palm, hoping she’d take the hint. 

She didn’t. Bulma tore his hand away with a giggle when the elevator opened and resumed her sprightly interrogation as they entered the apartment, following him all the way to the bathroom like a pecking bird. Vegeta practically had to push her away from the door he was about to lock in her face. 

Bulma pressed her little body against it to stop it from closing, her cheery features quickly sharpening into a pissy scowl. “Kami, what’s up your ass, Vegeta? It’s been two weeks, and you act like you aren’t even a little bit happy to see me!” 

“I’m tired, woman.” He didn’t know how much clearer he could get his point across.

“Does that mean no?”

“It means I’m tired, and I don’t have the energy to play doctor to your insecurities. Can’t you leave me alone for a minute to wash the fucking sea scum from my head?”

On a dime, her big blue eyes sparked wide before they sizzled into narrow slits, and her lips twisted into a gnarly sneer. “You’re a fucking asshole!” she shrieked, and grabbed the door handle to snap it shut in his face. “I hope you drown in there!”

Ugh… Vegeta pressed his back against the door and sighed. There was no way he was going to get through the worst hangover of his life with Bulma riding his ass. He hadn’t planned on dipping into the stash of pills Launch gave him, but he couldn’t find the space in his throbbing head to deal with the irrational wench on the opposite side of the door. Maybe just a half. 

Vegeta cracked a tablet in two and turned on the shower to drown the sound of him crushing and snorting it into his head. Just like all the times before, the little bead washed away every physical ache and every nagging thought like it was holy. He brushed any remnants of the pill from the counter and stepped into the hot shower, letting the combination of the scalding water on his skin and the oxy threading through his veins to put him at ease, as much as was possible. Kakarot and his snooping hit a nerve, but thankfully the clown seemed to understand to leave well enough alone, at least for now. 

He stayed there far too long, until the water ran cold. Though he’d barely wrapped a towel around his waist when a frantic banging threatened to take down the the door. 

“What the hell do you want now?” Vegeta swung the door open, barely registering Chi-Chi’s sickly, green pallor as she barged through and pushed him aside to puke in the toilet. Kami, they really were living in tandem. 

“Are you going to make it?” Vegeta quirked an eyebrow as Chi-Chi lifted her face from where it’d been pillowed against her forearms that rested on the seat.

“No thanks to your friend, Zarbon,” she croaked.

“Zarbon?” The name licked his ears sharp as a lash, triggering a deep-seated fury. He couldn’t hide the venom in his voice as he spat, “How the hell do you know him?” 

“He was at the bar,” Chi-Chi said. “With me and Bulma.”

A hot rush of blood ignited in his veins, like streams of molten lava that sent Vegeta into an inconsolable rage. What the hell was Zarbon doing in West City, and how had he stumbled upon Chi-Chi and Bulma? Were they stalking him? 

It wouldn’t surprise him if the Icejin cronies were still plotting to ruin his life, even after he’d gone. Since he was a teen, they’d done everything in their power to make him miserable. At first, he assumed they were jealous that he gave them a bump in their success and stole the spotlight. A fifteen-year-old half their size that could rip guitar better than most was a novelty, and every press hack begged him for interviews, live performances and photo shoots, cancelling events when he refused to participate. 

The treatments delivered from every video producer cast him as the focus, and even their label pushed for him to serve as some sort of mascot, holding their budget ransom for any treatment that didn’t pit him front and center, which meant most of their videos were self-produced, funded by Frieza and Cooler’s daddy. 

Not that Vegeta asked for it—the opposite, in fact; he didn’t want that kind of scrutinizing fame, to be a piece of fodder for the industry tabloids. Writing and playing music, that’s all he’d desired since he was a kid, but Icejin blew up, almost overnight, with him at the forefront, and the band’s original members never let him live it down. They tortured him over it, and for eight long years he was forced to fend off their fucked up displays of resentment. Of course they’d track him here, nose their way into his personal life to resume their twisted games.

Vegeta stormed out of the bathroom. Finding Bulma’s bedroom door locked, he pounded until she opened it with a snarl, whipping around in a huff as he pushed past the frame. 

“Zarbon!” The name hissed from his lips like a curse. “You were hanging out with that piece of shit?” 

Bulma’s scowl lifted for a moment, as if surprised by the subject of his sudden outburst, before she reformed her heated glare. “We weren’t _hanging out._ What the hell do you care?”

“I forbid you to go near him,” Vegeta spat. Zarbon, the whole lot of them, they were dangerous, downright criminal, and Bulma was clueless to what they were actually capable. How the Icejin scum came in contact with her, he didn’t so much care to hear. He only wanted to her to agree, but apparently, that was too much to ask.

Bulma cocked a hip and tipped her pretty head with a sneer, “Forbid, do you?” Her tone was sharp and defiant as she thrust a finger toward him like a sword. “First of all, do you really think I’d go anywhere near a guy that roofies women? I’m not stupid, Vegeta. Secondly, who are you to tell me who I can and can’t hang out with? It’s not like we’re _actually_ dating, are we? What exactly do you want? You can’t have it both ways.”

Vegeta brushed over the fact that Chi-Chi was drugged by the fool. That wasn’t a surprise. It was Bulma’s barely concealed ultimatum that stole his head, threatening him with her freedom to do as she pleased with whomever she wanted if he didn’t sell himself to her, effectively tying his tongue into a trail of babble.

“I don’t _want_ anything! I don’t… I can’t…” He was at a loss for words, unable to define what he wanted from the girl. 

In so many ways, he was drawn to her, wanted her by his side, glued at the hip like the previous month they spent together. If he understood what the word meant, he might’ve admitted that he was almost _happy_ those few weeks they shared in their own little bubble, trapped in this very apartment. Maybe he wasn’t conscious of it at the time, but sifting back through the weeks with Bulma, he realized they were as easy and simple as breathing. She soothed his anxious soul with every inappropriate joke and every shiteating grin. Yet at the same time, he knew he wasn’t capable of maintaining that type of relationship long-term. He’d eventually fuck it up, like he did with Eighteen and the others. All these girls needed something from him that he couldn’t define, much less deliver. He was a headcase, and eventually, they got fed-up, and sensing a relationship crater, he’d split. It wasn’t rocket science. It was self-defense. Managing how and when people entered and exited his life was the only thing he had a modicum of control over, and though he wasn’t ready to split from Bulma, he wasn’t ready to stick to her either. People came and went in waves, that just how it was. Permanence, happily-ever-after, that shit didn’t exist in real life like the movies.

“Am I just another rich girl to mooch off of?” she asked. The way she’d phrased the question meant Zarbon had gotten to her.

“Is that what he told you?”

“Does it matter?”

It didn’t. Whatever Zarbon told her was probably true. As far as relationships went, there wasn’t much Zarbon could say that wasn’t true. He’d been witness to them all. Vegeta had a type, and whether it was subconscious or not, they all offered similar benefits: a trifecta of housing, sex and mutual vice. Though Bulma didn’t subscribe to the latter, it didn’t make any difference.

“If you want some chump to be your boyfriend, that’s not me.” Not that he didn’t want to be in a relationship with her, but he knew he’d fuck it up if he tried. The moment he committed himself into her life, he was bound to destroy it. That’s just what he did, to everyone, and he couldn’t explain how it happened. Things just seemed to snowball with Vegeta, like he was cursed.

Bulma’s pretty face sunk, jutting out her lip as soggy tears formed across her bottom lids. She looked ready to scream, cry, and punch him all at once. Instead, she spun on her heel and stomped toward her bed. Grabbing up a pillow and throw quilt, she thrust it into his arms and pushed him out of her bedroom, slamming the door on his face.


	11. Your Worst Ex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just thought I should warn that this chapter is a little dark and ships a non-canon pair for a quick second. As always, thank you for the read [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres). 
> 
> Let me know what you think! I know this whole thing began on the fluffy side, and since chapter four (maybe?) it's tipped off a cliff of... well... EMOtion! But sincerely, thank you for sticking along this far!

The couch cushions shifted beneath him, and Vegeta cracked a groggy eye to see Chi-Chi situate herself at his feet and flip open her laptop. Instead of the pink, terry-cloth robe and box of cereal he was used to, she was dressed to impress in a black skirt, black tights, and a smart white blouse, poking away at a salad.

“Your phone’s ringing, loser.” She picked up his cell from the coffee table and chucked it at his face without turning her eyes from her screen. “It’s almost 3pm, by the way.”

Vegeta barely managed to catch it. Ignoring the little choir girl’s judgment, he stared at the tiny display that read Eighteen, and flicked the phone open on the last ring.

“Long time, no speak,” the girl droned.

“Haven’t exactly heard from you either.” 

“Yeah, well…” She hefted something heavy with a grunt, loud commotion in the background muffled around her voice. “I guess we both suck at communication.” 

Sure, that much was true. They hadn’t spoken in nearly ten months, and it wasn’t just him. Eighteen was guilty all the same for not keeping in contact, despite that she and her brother had been Vegeta’s sole confidants through his last few years in North City after Nappa left. That’s when he moved in with the twins, Eighteen mostly, ignoring Nappa’s plea to not blur the lines between himself and his label manager. 

Vegeta had known her for over four years, when she began as an intern for Icejin’s record label _Gods of Destruction_. It wasn’t long before she became the band’s official rep, and after that, promoted at every turn through the ranks of A &R. Now she practically ran the department, reporting to Whis directly.

Both he and Eighteen were adverse to relationships. They had a mutual understanding that theirs was a noncommittal friendship with benefits. It certainly wasn’t love, and it wasn’t even exclusive. They used each other, both too stubborn and detached that they could never be there for one another if it conflicted with their own self-interests. Eighteen worked for a while because she didn’t harbor any bitter feelings about that, at least not overtly.

“Why are you calling?” Vegeta asked.

“Mmm,” Eighteen hummed, closing a car door. “I heard your new project sold-out an 800 capacity venue last month.” Her voice pitched to read in a mocking tone, “ _A richly-layered, well-honed performance that refuses to be pinned down. Not exactly pop, not exactly emo, and not exactly punk, Saiyans will leave you in a i-hate-everyone kind of mood_ —Sounds a lot like you,” she finished with a dry laugh. “Word on the street is you’ve got an album in post too.” 

“So you’re calling to congratulate me?”

“Not exactly. I’m curating a label showcase, and two of my bands dropped out last minute for a tour. I want you guys as direct support. Headline even, if you can sell two thousand. Over half the tickets are sold already, but it’s next Saturday. If you can hustle, the guarantee is six grand, plus bonus for a sold out show.”

“Sounds cushy. But a showcase for GODs? You know we’re not a metal band, right?” His former label was niche-specific, _the_ premiere metal label, world-renowned, whose categories varied little between tags like thrash and death. 

“I’m aware, emo boy,” Eighteen sighed dramatically. “Record labels are dying, in case you haven’t heard of torrents. We can’t afford to be niche anymore. GODs is expanding into your realm. Emo, post-punk, dance-punk, indie, what the fuck have you. Apparently, that’s why we’re setting up an office in West: _diversity_ , and guess who’s heading A&R in the region?”

“No shit? You’re moving here?”

Vegeta could feel Chi-Chi staring at him from his periphery, tuning into his half of the conversation. Nabbing his cigarettes from his bag, he paced to the balcony to avoid her eavesdropping and tossed her a cold sneer as he stepped outside. Chi-Chi set down her bowl of rabbit food and rolled her eyes as she bent to dig in his backpack as if it was her own.

“If all goes well at this showcase, I’ll be here for good,” Eighteen said. “You free tonight? Hash out the details over a drink?”

“What the hell are you doing?” Vegeta covered the mouthpiece to scold Chi-Chi, who plopped a pile of his notebooks in her lap to fan through sheet music like they were gossip mags.

“Helloooo... Earth to Vegeta.”

“Yeah, yeah….” he replied. “You’re here now?” 

“Temporarily,” Eighteen answered. “On my way to my hotel. I’ll text you later.”

Vegeta hung up the phone and stood in the doorway, glaring at his nosey, raven-haired roomie. He was about to cuss her out for invading his personal space when she flicked her attention to him with a tip of her head, and in all seriousness asked, “Can I borrow these?” 

“My songs? Why?” 

“I have an idea,” she shrugged. “Been brewing it for a while. It might be crazy, but you and I have nothing to lose, right?”

That was probably true. Vegeta pinned his eyes on her through a huff of smoke, watching Chi-Chi stand with his life’s work bound tightly in her arms. Whatever the hell Kakarot’s broad was up to, he trusted her. 

“And close the door when you smoke,” Chi-Chi scoffed. “Were you born in a barn?” 

“A bunker, actually.” Vegeta grinned, turning his back without shutting the door.

***

Kami, classes were useless. Bulma was always knowledgeable above and beyond what her professors preached during lectures, but she was also an active participant out of sheer ego, a teacher’s pet in fact, her hand raised and ignored with every inquiry. _Does someone besides Bulma know the answer_ was her professors’ go-to slogan. 

Yet today, she found herself more distracted than usual, staring at the blank pages of her notebook as her mind constantly relived the previous night’s argument with Vegeta. Was she being too needy, too controlling? He was right, they hadn’t known each other all that long, but she still couldn’t help but take Nappa and Zarbon’s warnings about him to heart. Was he using her? A place to stay, a girl to lay. Fuck, how poetic. Was she an idiot? Was he really a drug addict? He did seem off when he came home from recording, and the smell of alcohol on him was hard to ignore. And what if he was? A part of her didn’t care, not in terms of morality; she was no saint herself. It was his wellbeing she was worried about. 

Living with him for so many weeks, it was obvious that Vegeta was a mental trainwreck with severe social anxiety that bordered on clinical depression. He never wanted to leave the apartment, and while the first day or two wrapped up with him in bed was cute, eventually she went stir crazy. A date, was that so hard? 

Despite their argument, she half expected him to be there when she returned that evening, falling back into their old routine. What the hell else did the boy have to do? It’s not like he had a job, or friends, or family. Yet when she came home to an empty apartment, a nervous anxiety overwhelmed her, a feeling she didn’t suffer often except when he’d been gone. Where was he? Not that she had any right to know or should care, despite all logic, she felt physically sick, nauseous even, when she realized he wasn’t at home waiting to apologize. It was strange. Nobody had this sort of hold over Bulma Briefs. 

Once she found the humility to call him, after pacing the apartment for over an hour, he didn’t answer. That’s when she noticed her car keys were missing from their hook on the wall. _Oh hell no_. Bulma called him again, screaming to his voicemail, “Motherfucker, you took my car! Bring it back immediately or I’ll report it stolen!”

***

She looked the same as he remembered, wearing torn, black skinny jeans, a pair of combat boots and a cut-off _Pantera_ tee. Her bleach-blonde hair was still cut in a sharp bob above her shoulders. Eighteen was hard to ignore. She was a stone cold babe, one of the reasons he stayed with her for so long. Almost four years, they’d lasted, if either of them were seriously counting. She was as sexy as much as she was detached, and one of the only girls he’d been forced to hit on first after she ignored him at every meeting, every photoshoot, and every show—always standing off to the side, looking as pissed off as he felt about the hollow artifice of the industry.

Despite not seeing her in nearly ten months, right before that last tour, she offered no more emotion than if she’d seen him just yesterday, hailing her drink lazily as he approached the bar. The feeling was mutual as far as Vegeta was concerned.

“What are we drinking?” he asked.

“The usual,” which meant anything hard. Eighteen slid her drink to him. “Courtesy of the GODs, get whatever you want.” She waived her business credit card.

Vegeta took a whiff. “Whatever. Whiskey’s fine.”

“Court mandated rehab is working out, I see,” she smirked as Vegeta swallowed her drink in one gulp. 

“You’re funny.”

“A lot of rumors are still floating around the office. I’m curious to know what’s true. That lawyer really takes her attorney-client privilege shit seriously.”

“Good! Considering all my goddamn royalties are paying the bitch.” Vegeta was glad to hear it. Using the label’s lawyer was less than ideal for that exact reason. Gossip was a helltrain at the GOD’s office, and the stories he was forced to divulge to that pantsuit in confidence to avoid doing hard time were, at best, humiliating. “Look, you’re gonna have to get me a lot more of these.” Vegeta lifted the empty glass.

“Deal.” Eighteen gestured the bartender over and proceeded to buy an entire bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue label scotch with her company card. “I need one more band, and the two co-headliners tonight are a toss-up. Lend me your oh-so-precious expertise, maestro.”

“Deal.” Vegeta smirked as they clinked their glasses. 

They made their way to an open table near the sound booth, if only to hear the bands in their best light as well as avoid the crowd. Not that they really needed to. Both bands were chill indie, nothing that would draw a bunch of skanking shit kickers. And it felt nice, nostalgic in a way, sitting in a dark corner with his oldest friend, sipping scotch while they listened to local bands cry about their heartbreaks.

“So, are you gonna tell me what really happened?” Eighteen prodded.

“If you’d shown up for my hearing, you’d know.” Vegeta cut her off with a dark glare.

She was meant to be a witness on his defense at his preliminary hearing, but she never showed, claiming that she had too much bullshit with work. Even if that was true, which it wasn't, it bothered him that Eighteen never appeared to speak on his behalf, one of the only people that could and would corroborate the abuse he’d put up with day in and day out among Frieza, Cooler and their band of shitheads, most of it anyway. He’d die before he told Eighteen everything he’d endured at the hands of that sick, purple-haired fuck.

“I got you the label’s own counsel, was that not enough?”

“Relax, I’m over it. I got off anyway,” Vegeta sighed watching the girl fill his glass. “Aside from being broke as fuck now.” 

Three months in a county jail plus two in rehab for possession charges was nothing compared to the sentencing he could have faced for an assault. Self-defense, that’s how his lawyer milked the narrative, and it was wholly true, even without disclosing the worst details to anyone but her.

The first band began to play, and though they were supposed to be scouting for talent, the two kept to themselves, drinking and reliving their lives in North in a dark corner. It was bizarre, being in West City with Eighteen under the guise of friendship. On top of that, the game hadn’t changed. As much as Vegeta was guilty of his vices, Eighteen was no better. 

“You holding?” she asked. 

Vegeta rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but like I said, I’m broke as fuck, and I’m running low.” In the past two days, he’d burned through half of his supply.

“Fine. Give me a contact, and I’ll hook you up tomorrow. What do you got?”

Vegeta pulled the few remaining tabs of oxy from his pocket and snuck two into her palm below the table. 

“King of the downers.” Eighteen rolled her eyes as she popped the pills into her mouth and took them down with the rest of her scotch.

They watched in silence as the first band finished their set, letting the substances mellow out the weird vibes that lingered since Vegeta left, drinking scotch at a pace that was undignified for the quality of the bottle. By the time the last band was setting up, Vegeta was buzzing a hard tune, and Eighteen had scooted closer to his chair. Unlike everything else Eighteen did, she wasn’t so bold and blatant when it came to the mysteries of their relationship that she wanted to uncover. She’d never admit that she’d been harboring some animosity over their unfinished business. Instead, she tested him to see where they stood.

“You drunk enough to dish yet?” she asked, leaning into him. Her hand rested on his thigh. 

“I don’t know why you’re so damned curious. It’s not that interesting.”

“So humor me.”

“Ugh…” Vegeta tried to dial his memory back to that day without the feelings that accompanied it. He swallowed another glass of scotch, ignoring her fingers tracing up the inseam of his leg as he tried to summarize the events without getting too detailed, without giving away the meat of it and getting angry all over again. 

“It’s probably what you heard, for the most part. But we were somewhere in the boonies, between Nicky and North, and Frieza was… messing with me like always. It was the end of the tour, and I dunno, I just snapped. After forty days straight of their bullshit on that bus. Eight years, actually, if anyone’s counting. A bottle of Jameson, I just reached for it and smashed it over his head. He collapsed right there next to me, and it felt so good to knock him out like that, I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop once I’d started. I just kept hitting him, over and over. They tried to pull me off him, but I don’t remember much after that. At some point the driver called the cops and they took us off the bus, but it was hazy. I remember being in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed. They said I had to stay there because I failed my tox screen so badly, they were worried I’d have a seizure or something trying to detox. But I was too mad to think about that until it was happening. I thought I was going to die. Fuck, Eighteen, I really thought I was going to die.” 

Eighteen just sighed and stared into her glass, skipping over parts she didn’t have the emotional constitution to hear. “Those dudes are assholes, and I’m glad you did that, beat the shit out of them, whatever the cost. It’s one of the reasons I’m switching over from that division, honestly. I can’t deal with the misogynistic egos of that band in particular.”

“Well, good for you.” Vegeta raised a glass to cheers over his ill-fated band. “To fucking Icejin.”

“To fucking Icejin.” Eighteen shot her drink with a frown. 

They settled in to listen as the last band began to play, but Vegeta couldn’t pay attention, not with Eighteen’s hand running up and down his leg. A year ago back in North, he’d be all over her in the back of a venue, but now, he couldn’t manage to reciprocate the feeling. Maybe he was still angry, or maybe it was guilt. Regardless, Eighteen was clearly growing frustrated with his failure to return the overture as she sighed and tore her hand away to pour him another drink. 

He meant the things he said to Bulma—he couldn’t commit to her the way she wanted without eventually hurting her. The responsibility alone would crush him. But at the same time, by turning her away, he felt hollow, more so than usual. He knew where he was headed—right back to an old, familiar loop, motivating himself with a buffet of mind-numbing substances. He remembered what that was like to look forward to the next pill, the next drink, the next cigarette—every day spent leapfrogging bandaids until they either stopped working or he couldn’t physically go on, passing out for a day and waking up empty again with his cravings reset. While detox was a vivid, torturous memory, it wasn’t enough to deter him. In less than forty-eight hours, he’d managed to purge sobriety from his system like he’d never entertained it in the first place. By the time the last band finished, the bottle was empty and the bar lights flashed to close. 

Eighteen was never one for public displays of affection under normal circumstances, but she was drowning in it now, treating Vegeta like an old boyfriend with an arm wrapped around his waist almost possessively as they took shots of tequila at last call. The more he drank, the harder it became to not indulge his old girlfriend, for lack of a better term. Despite their ups and downs, she and her brother were as close to him as Nappa, the only people he held a modicum of trust for from that place, that understood his breed of crazy. Eighteen most of all, since she indulged him, rode the crazy train right alongside him. 

After all the time spent living in Eighteen’s orbit, it was hard to say no to the woman. She should have been everything he wanted: no-nonsense, no commitment, no complicated feelings. But after he was arrested, after she failed to surface in court, after she never even tried, not once, to visit him in jail or rehab, Vegeta wrote her off. He didn’t even tell the twins that he was moving to West City; most of his belongings still lived in their apartment.

Once the bartenders shooed them outside, Vegeta looked to Bulma’s car in the lot. Eighteen was talking to the venue owner, distracted as Vegeta pulled out his phone and realized that he had five missed calls from Bulma and a mess of raging texts and voicemails. Shit, the woman was mad.

He pressed send on Bulma’s number. Without processing what he was going to say, he listened to the ring on the other end of the line, hoping she’d answer, but he felt the phone being ripped from his hand when the line picked up.

Eighteen said into the thing, “Vegeta is too drunk to drive, so you can claim your vehicle tomorrow. Safety first, am I right?” She snapped the phone shut and tossed it back, grabbing him by the elbow and leading him down the block toward her hotel. 

Vegeta knew he was in trouble. Thanks to Zarbon, Bulma already had it in her head that he couldn’t be trusted, and now Eighteen just proved it. Maybe he couldn’t, and that was the whole point. Bulma would never forgive him now, and he’d just be prolonging the inevitable by pretending she meant something to him. He tried to focus on the present, tried to bury thoughts of Bulma deep below his reach. 

“What do you want? Vodka, gin, tequila or rum?” Eighteen pulled tiny bottles of booze from the mini fridge.

“Rum, I guess,” Vegeta said, collapsing onto the bed. The room was spinning around him. He stared up at the ceiling trying to dial down the nausea, but he was nearly out of pills, forced to take the alcohol head-on if he didn’t want to waste them, share more of them with her. 

Eighteen laid next to him, staring up at the same empty space for a minute before she thrust the tiny bottle of rum in front of his face.

Vegeta downed his shot with a side of remorse, feeling the weight of it crater his stomach like stone. Despite telling Bulma that he didn’t want a relationship, in the moment he thought of nothing else but her, a longing to be back in her bed, to see her stupid, toothy smile, her brilliant blue eyes; that was all he could think of as Eighteen rolled over to kiss him. 

He tried to reign in the feeling, to forget about Bulma and focus on _this_ girl, the one that had been so familiar to him once upon a time. Eighteen climbed to straddle him at the foot of the bed, tracing her fingers under his shirt along his torso, pulling it over his head as she leaned into him. Vegeta kissed her back, but it was sloppy drunk. As much as he tried to make his lips and his tongue work, wrapping his hands around Eighteen’s ass as they sucked face and she began to grind against him, he felt frozen. It was hard to tell whose fault it was. After meeting her again, he felt resentful, and it was difficult to separate his time with Eighteen from Icejin. The moment her shirt left her head and he rolled the girl to her back, his tongue crashing against Eighteen’s in a familiar trip, he stopped.

“I can’t.” He pressed himself from her frame and quickly flopped to his back.

“Seriously, what’s the deal?” Eighteen sat up with a huff, her cold blue eyes narrowed, searing him with annoyed suspicion. “You’ve been acting weird all night. Are you lying about being mad at me? Or what, you got a girlfriend or something?” she asked, her tone mocking.

Vegeta didn’t respond as he sat up to nab his shirt from the floor, tearing it over his head without making eye contact.

“Oh shit... You have a girlfriend!” Eighteen chimed. “A fucking girlfriend! Please don’t tell me that’s who was on the phone, or I’ll feel like an asshole.”

“Ugh!” Vegeta huffed and threw himself against the mattress. He likely just messed things up permanently with Bulma, and the realization flooded him with anxiety. His restless limbs found hold over his head, pulling at his hair, trying to stifle a panic. He knew how pathetic he looked. His wide eyes stung as he failed to blink, peeking at Eighteen from under his arms. “What the hell do I do now?”

“You’re an idiot,” she seethed. Eighteen snatched her shirt from the bed, whipping it roughly over her head. “You should have told me!” 

“Thanks, Eighteen, that’s really helpful. Seriously, what the fuck do I do?” 

The quiver in his voice must have been enough to reroute the robotic girl’s icy disposition. Her cold blue eyes softened sympathetically, but her tone still bit back with agitation. “Beg, plead, crawl back to the bitch on hands and knees if you really like her. I don’t know! Shit Vegeta, that’s why we never did the whole couple thing! Other people have feelings, you know? You can’t just go around fucking people!”

“Why didn’t you just let me go home?” he whined, trying to pass blame on his current predicament. 

Eighteen was not about to take the fall. She narrowed her eyes with a contemptuous sneer as she hissed, “ _Home?_ Oh, that’s a word you use now? That’s adorable. You’re drunk, dumbass. Unless you can pull a subway out of your ass, I’m not letting you leave until you sober up.”

“Buy me a cab?” he quipped, hopefully.

“Fuck you, Vegeta.” Eighteen crawled under the sheets, rolling over as she flicked off the light and pretended to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Eighteen’s review is a Frankenstein of a bunch of TBS tell all your friends reviews,  
> Since I am THAT nerdy when it comes to my love for that band.


	12. Soaking in Sympathy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, this thing keeps getting more melodramatic by the second. Sorry if that's not your thing, but I grew up on Leonardo DiCaprio and Jared Leto movies, and Conor Oberst/DCFC/TBS tunes, so there was no way this story about that era wasn't going to turn into an emo pizza. If you like it or hate it, tell me why, because I'll take your feedback regardless!
> 
> Anywhoo.... I'm going to keep running with CFTT, but I also have a different story (completed!) coming in mid-December for the Vegebulocracy Big Bang that I am super stoked on. So, I really hope ya'll check that out too. There's going to be a ton of amazing work from writers and artists coming out for this event :)
> 
> As always, thank you for the read [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres). And as always, I changed a bunch of stuff since. Also, my friend here is in the midst of writing a phenomenal story called Matchmaker, and please go read it if ya haven't already, because it's smart, funny, and an all around gem.

He barely remembered where he was when his phone began to buzz inside his pocket. At first he ignored it, trying to siphon off a wicked hangover with more sleep, but it rang again immediately after it stopped the first time. Then again after that. It rang over and over, like it was some kami-damned emergency. Groggily, he struggled to tear the device from the tight pocket of his jeans, flipping it open without opening his eyes.

“What?” he finally mumbled. The stale taste of too many drinks and cigarettes left his mouth dry, like his tongue was coated in chalk.

“Where are you?” Chi-Chi’s voice snipped angrily over the line.

Vegeta sat up too fast, dizzy as the blood drained from his head. “Downtown… I think. Why?” He was too messed up to hide the anxiety in his voice as the previous night rushed back to fill him with dread. There was only one reason Chi-Chi would be calling: to let him know he fucked up beyond repair. He glanced around the hotel room, thankful that they were both clothed. That part wasn’t a dream; maybe, he managed to stop himself from imploding his relationship completely. Eighteen cracked open an eye to glare at him. 

“Uh, well… You might want to get back here, fast. Bulma’s threatening to dump your guitars down the garbage chute and report her car stolen.”

“Goddammit! Hold her off, will you? I’ll be right there.” Vegeta leapt out of bed without so much as a glance at Eighteen. He chased his hangover with a rail in the bathroom before escaping the hotel to find Bulma’s car. It took some time locating the bar where he’d parked it, and he was pretty sure he was still drunk as he ripped through the streets and double-parked the vehicle in front of their apartment. Without his missing key fob, he couldn’t get into the parking garage and was forced to buzz the girls from the front entrance, hoping Chi-Chi would answer and let him in, but he wasn’t that lucky. 

“Go away, Vegeta!” Bulma howled over the speaker. “I don’t want to see you.”

“Bulma, let me up. I didn’t do anything.” That wasn’t one-hundred percent true, he knew. But he stopped whatever was about to happen with his old fling because of her. He’d even tried to go home to her, twice, but couldn’t because… Well, because that bitch succeeded in getting him drunk, like she always did. Maybe, he’d asked for it. But she took his phone; she talked to Bulma. If the girl wanted to be mad at somebody, it wasn’t him; it was Eighteen.

“You’re a liar! Go fuck yourself, or I’ll incinerate your stupid guitars faster than you can get your cheating dick up!”

The mention of destroying the only items of value he had in this world flipped a switch on his already waning composure. If Bulma wasn’t going to be reasonable, he certainly wasn’t either. “Bitch, in case you forgot, I have your car.”

“So! I’ll just report it stolen. Don’t test me, Vegeta! You think you’re so clever, but you’re nothing but a scheming little bastard.”

While trying to find the words to reply, another tennant opened the door to leave, and Vegeta took the opportunity to rush inside, beelining for the elevator, But he was stopped short when the normally jolly doorman leapt from his seat to confront him.

“I can’t let you upstairs, son,” he said with a quavering voice.

“Try and stop me,” Vegeta growled, not bothering to look at the rotund man, not until he noticed the goon reach for a gun at his belt from the corner of his eye. Vegeta rolled his head around to scoff at the pathetic creature with his dark, threatening orbs. 

“They gave a rent-a-cop like you a gun?” He couldn’t help but smile that the loser really thought he could be intimidated. “Safety’s on motherfucker. I dare you to shoot.”

The man glanced at the weapon he had no intention of actually using. Realizing that Vegeta was not about to back down, his shaky voice spit out, “I’ll call the authorities.”

A snort of air left his nostrils as Vegeta turned to the guy, his brows pulled over his features in a cruel scowl. The dope’s claim to call the cops was more threatening than a weapon. He couldn’t be arrested again, not without the risk of serving time. He spun on his heel to retreat out the door, calling Chi-Chi over and over as he paced the sidewalk to no avail. Fuck it, if Bulma wanted to play dirty, he was a master of the art.

“Hey!” Vegeta called over the nearest stranger. Some punkish college student stopped short and removed his headphones with a quizzical tilt of his head. “You want a free car? It’s all yours, pal.” Pointing at Bulma’s sporty coup, Vegeta tossed the wad of keys at the kid, who after juggling his discman to catch them, just blinked back with confusion.

Uncaring whether the kid actually took the car or not, he continued down the block, heading for the music shop. Vegeta was hoping to run into Kakarot. The fool could surely talk some sense into the woman to get his guitars back, but as he stormed into the shop, only the midget and a few customers were inside, mulling over a wall of cymbals.

“Hey Vegeta!” Krillin waved.

“Is Kakarot here?” Vegeta asked, glancing around the space.

“No, he works downtown now. What’s up?”

Before Vegeta could respond, Nappa emerged from the office with a clipboard and pencil in hand. But the second his attention lifted from the board, a sigh, heavy and deflating, displaced the air around him. Vegeta recognized that look. Nappa knew he’d fallen back to old habits, but unlike the times before, rather than jumping into dad mode—trying to wrap him up in a bubble, locking him away to withdrawal and care for him for a week or two—he barely registered that Vegeta was there. Instead, he maintained a cold look of exhausted failure.

“You here to buy something, Vegeta? In case you didn’t read the sign, I’ve got a strict policy on loitering.” He gestured to the door with the point of his pencil.

Vegeta merely grunted and spun on his heel back toward the shop’s exit. If only to annoy Nappa further, he kicked over a guitar from its stand and let the thing rip an amp on his way out the front door.

He had nowhere to go. That’s what he realized the moment his feet hit the sidewalk. Nappa was mad, Bulma was mad, which meant Chi-Chi was mad; Eighteen was mad; Kakarot was useless; the midget was working, and even if Raditz was in town, he probably wanted to kill him. There were only two people left on this planet that Vegeta knew would be open to taking him. He hailed a cab, and with the last zeni he had to his name, he directed the driver to the Briefs’ estate.

Vegeta cursed himself as the cab backed down the long driveway and turned down the suburban road out of view. He stood in front of the giant orb Bulma called home, staring up at the structure with clenched fists. What the hell was he doing here? These people were practically strangers, and Bulma would throw a fit if she knew he came to her parents. What if she already told them he cheated on her? Would they turn him away? His fragile ego couldn’t bare the thought, and he spun to retreat down the driveway. Maybe Launch would pick him up, if she wasn’t with Raditz. There was a marina not too far from here. Even though he knew that idea would suck him into a whirlpool of self-destruction, a part of him, a gigantic, seismic chunk of his soul wanted nothing more than to board a boat and drown himself in painkillers.

“Vegeta?” Bulma’s mother’s sing-songy voice rang from the door of a greenhouse attached to the main estate. Her curly blond hair was stuffed into a wide-brimmed hat, as if she could catch sun this time of year.

He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed that she caught him. A few more steps down the long drive, and he’d be alone and free to self-implode, but she was already skipping toward him. 

“Hello, honey! What brings you here? Where’s Bulma?” Panchy wrapped him up with the ferocity of a lioness protecting her cub. He melted a little against her, letting his head drop against her shoulder as her dainty arms belied the strength with which she held him.

“I just need to sleep,” he muttered.

“Sleep?” She released her hug to clasp his face between her palms, staring into his worn features with round, soft blue eyes. “My, you do look tired. We’ve got plenty of space, dear. Why don’t you come inside? I’ll fix you some dinner.”

As she guided him into the house, Vegeta felt his lungs clamp up the way they always did when he was met with an onrush of uncomfortable emotion. The moment she let go of his arm, he spun around, ready to dart like a wild animal that couldn’t comprehend the kind of trap that was meant to help him. Panchy’s reflexes were quicker than he thought. She had him by the wrist. 

“Sit,” she crooned, directing him to the same chair where they shared brunch months ago.

“I’m not hungry.” He wasn’t. With as many opiates he’d ingested the past few days, on top of stress, he wasn’t sure he could choke down his favorite meal if he was force fed. He could barely keep his head up. 

“Oh, that’s okay,” Bulma’s mother cocked her pretty head and pulled out a chair next to him. But rather than the looks of disappointment, pity or judgement he was used to, the look on Bulma’s mother’s face was something wholly different. He couldn’t place it. She reached a hand across the gap between them to cup his face in her palm, her thumb brushing softly against his cheekbone. “Some rest, then, and you’ll be good as new,” she said, and leaned in to kiss him.

As her lips touched his forehead, they struck a memory like a brick to the face. Mother, that’s what it was. He remembered her only in fragments, bits of terrifying, bloody images from that last day in Saiya that stuck in his mind. Most his life, he tried to force himself to forget his own mother, because he couldn’t focus on any memory of her besides the last. They were blown apart, erased from the earth along with the rest of the town where they’d been hiding for the first five years of his life. But now, the way Panchy looked at him, a buried feeling, one free from the carnage of war, found its way to the surface. He had a mother, once upon a time, that looked at him with that same, undisputable love. 

***

Krillin’s car pulled up the long drive, and Kakarot jumped from the passenger seat to greet him. 

“I have a present for you,” he grinned, nodding his head toward the backseat. 

Vegeta glanced through the window. His guitars, all three of them, were stacked across the bench. 

“You can thank Chi-Chi, actually. She locked them in her bedroom while Bulma was yellin’ at you on the comm.”

Kami, bless that wretched woman. Vegeta huffed a heavy sigh of relief as he opened the door, tipping the cases up to find room to sit beside them.

The past few days at Bulma’s parents’ estate were bittersweet. He spent them wrapped up in bed with a mean hangover, sick and sweating. Panchy assumed he had the flu, tisking with a shake of her head as she pressed her delicate palm against his brow. 

“Poor dear,” she’d mutter, and run off to fetch him a bowl of soup.

A part of him didn’t want to leave, even for a few hours for practice. As shitty as he felt, he liked the escape, buried beneath a pile of heavy blankets with Bulma’s mother catering to his every need. Sleep crushed him like a tidal wave, surging over his thoughts, washing them from his mind as he drifted in and out of consciousness. 

This was the first time he’d gotten out of bed since he’d arrived, and all the churning emotions and cravings he’d been running from flooded back with a vengeance.

“Is that her?” Kakarot asked when they pulled up at the practice space. Eighteen stood against the building chatting with Nappa over a cigarette.

“Damn! That was your label rep?” Krillin yipped. “She’s a fox! Is she single?”

“Definitely,” Vegeta huffed. Kakarot tossed him a knowing look from the passenger seat, fully aware of the situation Vegeta had gotten himself into—being Bulma’s best friend and all—but thankfully, Kakarot seemed to finally believe him after Vegeta met his endless texts with a simple, repetitive claim that _Nothing happened_.

Eighteen was there to watch a full rehearsal, that was one thing, to meet the band that was now headlining her little show. But none of that really mattered. She didn’t _need_ to meet them. The real reason she arrived was for him, because she owed him. 

As the others carried their gear into the space, Vegeta pulled her aside, dragging her by the elbow around the corner of the building.

“A little fiendy today, aren’t we?” she hissed, annoyance radiating from her cold visage as she cocked her head and dug into her back pocket. 

Vegeta was in no mood to deal with hers. “Can it. Just hand it over.” 

Eighteen plopped her palm in his. “Just don’t go killing yourself before we can make money on this little project of yours.”

Vegeta looked down to his palm, counting the pills. “Six? That’s all you’ve got?”

“Your contact was fresh out. Gotta say, that bitch was a trip. A little crazy, no?”

“What of it? Where’s the rest? Is she coming back?” He didn’t give a flying fuck whether Eighteen liked the girl or not. 

“Relax dude. I bought some blow from her, if you’re interested.” She wagged her eyebrows, but it was obvious she was trying to provoke him by reminding him of their twisted adventures—the days they spent lost in waves of competing highs and lows. The last time Vegeta did blow was with Eighteen, and he spent half a day panicked and practically crying through a bad comedown, which she indulged for the first few hours, before she grew annoyed and pretended to sleep. He left their apartment, anxious and shaking as he paced the North City skyways, chain smoking for three or four hours before, finally, he tracked down a Xanax to shut the feelings down.

“Fuck that. You said you’d hook me up.”

She narrowed her stoney eyes, jutting her face toward his as she spat, “And I did. That’s four more pills than you had before. Jesus, Vegeta, you sound like a junkie. Go bust a limb and get your own prescription if you want it so bad.” 

As much as he resented her judgement, he couldn’t deny that she was right. He was being a bit fiendish, quickly falling back into a cycle he swore he’d overcome. But none of that mattered now. In all honesty, he was more worried about supply than maintaining control. Five of his six month stint in sobriety he spent locked up, so in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t hard work and self-control he was throwing away. If anything, he was getting his control back, the freedom to do as he pleased—effectively lifting the miserable weight that was determined to sink him like a hundred prying hands pulling him down by the ankles into a sticky, dark muck. If Eighteen or Nappa or Kakarot looked down on him for it, that wasn’t his fucking problem. He turned from her with a grunt, making his way to the bathroom to fix his head, if only minimally before he met the rest of the congregation in the tiny practice space. 

The last person he wanted to see on Kami’s green earth was Raditz, and it took every ounce of restraint that he could muster to ignore the stupid fool. Congratulating himself over the bruises that graced Raditz’s face wasn’t enough to temper his disdain for the man, even if Raditz managed to play with more finesse than usual, trying to impress Eighteen who sat on a spare drum throne next to the midget, watching them run through their set with a bored ambivalence. 

In and out, that’s all Vegeta wanted. No pitying stares from Kakarot or judgy looks from Nappa and Eighteen. No drama from Raditz. He had what he came for, and now he only wanted to retreat back to Bulma’s parent’s house and lock the door. Vegeta hurried his bandmates through the set and had to practically drag Krillin away from flirting with the blonde bitch to drive him back to that estate. 

The quarter pill he’d ingested wasn’t enough, already wearing off when he arrived back at Bulma’s home. Coming down always made him irritable and restless, and he quickly grew frustrated as he tried to find his way back to the guest room he’d been staying in without stopping off for another wasted line. The place was big, and he got lost somewhere in the twisting hallways. He gave up when a large balcony to his right nagged, at the very least, for a cigarette. Vegeta stepped outside into the cool air and lit a smoke, trying to regain his bearings as he gauged which direction of vast, green garden he was staring at. South, maybe?

“It’s a terrible habit,” a voice, soft and eloquent, piped up behind him. 

Vegeta turned to see Bulma’s father smoking a cigarette of his own, petting the black cat that crawled over his belly as he reclined in a sunning chair. 

Though he’d been there for days, he hadn’t seen the little, mustachioed man. Her father was always in his labs, and Vegeta, well... he was always in bed, trying not to die.

“I can’t seem to kick them myself.” Dr. Briefs held the cigarette in front of his face to look it over before he shrugged and put it back to his lips. “A lot of things in this world can kill you. Death comes for us all eventually. Why worry about it? That’s my motto. Life is a delicate balance of risk and reward. You do what makes you happy and ignore the rest, I suppose.” 

Vegeta glowered as he leaned against the railing under a veil of smoke. If the old man was trying to part wisdom, it was bullshit. What if nothing made him happy? It seemed like a pipe dream, something he was always chasing. He’d already been around the world, played to crowds of thousands. Three gold records hung on the walls at the GOD’s office, along with a few awards. He’d made decent money off those albums too, mostly from touring cycles, and though it was a fraction of what he was technically owed, it was more than he’d ever dreamed of having. Still, money, fame, none of it made him happy. He wasted it all on substances and lawyers. Despite success, he was just as miserable at the peak of it as he was now, maybe moreso. Vegeta felt less like he was chasing happiness as he was outrunning its opposite—besides those few fleeting seconds on stage or writing alone, when everything was working and flowing, when he didn’t have to think at all and just exited on a singular, untainted plane with his creation. The rest was bullshit.

He thought about what Dr. Briefs said to him at breakfast that day, when he vocalized the big what-if of Vegeta’s life, the one he’d been brooding over since he was child: if Saiya won the war fifteen years ago, maybe he’d be a prince. _Perhaps in the next universe_ , her father had mused in Saiygo. _Maybe one of me is lucky_ , he’d responded.

As laughable as it was, Vegeta thought about it a lot. Considering himself a prince in any universe was pathetic. But the echo of Dr. Briefs’ words wound their way into his head as if they could ping through the barriers of infinite planes and summon a copy of himself on the other side to confirm if it was true. More than wondering if there was a version of himself existing in another universe that was living like a royal in his home country—amongst his father, his mother and sibling, whatever the kid was going to be—he needed to know if that Vegeta was any different? Or was that person was still plagued by a heavy, dark fog that made it hard to breath, that made it impossible to care about anyone or anything substantially. 

This built-in defense he used to push people away, that made his success mostly meaningless, had he learned it overtime, or had it always been there? It was hard to remember those first five years, whether he was content or not before the town was leveled to bits of rubble. Those memories were near impossible to access except in foggy fragments, and after, once he was old enough to comprehend the mess of his existence, he was already co-existing with that darkness as his only companion, unable to stop it from festering inside his soul like a rotting wound. Success did fuck all to curb it.

Success made it worse. Icejin made it worse. Despite how fucked the experience was, he’d conquered more life goals than most people could dream of through Icejin, yet here he was, still a tragic disappointment. Maybe he was inherently made this way, and even that alternate version of him, living as a prince among his family in his homeland was just as broken. In a way, that was better, it meant he wasn’t so unlucky, but in a way it was worse. It meant his condition was a permanent fixture, and he was stupid for trying to overcome it. 

“Sleep tight, my boy.” Dr. Briefs roused himself from the lounge chair. “Bring the cat in when you’re done.”

Lost in thought, Vegeta hadn’t noticed the creature that was twining itself around his ankles, purring as it rubbed its cheeks against his pant leg. Unsure what to make of the thing, he crouched down and held out a hand. The cat began to rub its face against his outstretched fingers, butting its head forcefully under his palm, demanding a pet. It reminded him of Bulma: just as demanding, needy, spoiled... loving. He did miss her, too little too late. He swallowed the thought as he tossed his cigarette butt and made his way inside, and sure enough, the creature followed. If Bulma was a cat, Vegeta thought, smirking at the little doll that trotted at his heels through the confusing corridors and, eventually, into the elusive guest room. It hopped onto the bed and curled itself around the top of his head, its purrs rolling in a soothing cadence, vibrating against his skull, lulling him to sleep.


	13. You're a Lush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little longer with a little more action. Hope you enjoy! Either way, let me know via the comment thread. I moderate my comments only for trolls, not critical reviews, so even if you aren't feeling something, tell me! :)
> 
> Much love to my beta soldier for putting up with a pretty aimless story that I'm determined to make something of one day, lol. [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres). And again, I changed a lot since, and there's probably some new typos.
> 
> Also thank you [ibitchytimemachine](https://ibitchytimemachine.tumblr.com/post/180051602703/cut-from-the-team-rockykelboa-dragon-ball) for the review! Your words seriously inspired me to push through a crappy week with this story when I was about to say fuck it. And also to whomever nominated and/or voted for CFTT for drama this year for The Prince and the Heiress Awards, I love you. :)

A bit of waffle shot its way back up her pipe with a cough when she learned that her cheating, ex-nothing had wormed his way into her household. Her parents never told her outright that Vegeta was staying with them. She found out at her regular Sunday brunch when her mother offhandedly mentioned that they save _poor Vegeta_ a plate, that he hadn’t eaten much of anything for days. _Days!_ That’s how long he’d been there, passed out in a guest room with the flu, her mother claimed. The very idea of him living in her parents home after what he did to her was insulting, and she had half a mind to track him down like an angry bloodhound and rip him limb from limb. 

“He’s not sick, mom. He’s a junkie, and he’s probably in withdrawal.” She tried to get her point across, but her parents were essentially hippies disguised as successful, world renowned inventors. They’d let her run amok her entire life without consequence, so of course they’d take in her conniving, sonofabitch, ex-lover like he was family.

“Oh Bulma, I don’t believe that for a second. He’s sweet,” her mother claimed. Kami, she could be so dense sometimes. If a mass-murdering psychopath came to the door, she’d probably make him feel right at home. But Bulma knew better. No, Vegeta was not sweet. After interrogating both Goku and especially Nappa, she understood that Vegeta was not sweet by any interpretation of the word. 

Nappa finally came clean about him. Of course, it was right after he’d left for West City—leaving a seventeen-year-old Vegeta in the hands of his shady, older bandmates—that he got mixed up in drugs. Every time he’d see him, he was worse, more strung-out, more withdrawn, quiet, busted-up and bruised from picking fights. Nappa admitted he was somewhat relieved the state committed him to rehab after he was charged for narcotics possession on his last tour. Then months later, Vegeta moved out West. Fresh from rehab, he was bright eyed and sober, and Nappa gave his boy the benefit of the doubt, letting him join Saiyans. But, as Nappa sourly admitted, it was a mistake. Vegeta was beyond repair.

It wasn’t just that he was a hopeless addict; he was a selfish, advantageous bastard, and now he was living with her own parents, pulling the wool over their humble eyes, taking advantage of their charitable nature and circumstance. Yet kicking him out of her home was a losing battle. They both adored the piece of shit. How he managed to woo them, make them dote over him like he was their own child, she hadn’t a clue. Were they that desperate for a son?

“Maybe it’s all in your head, dear. Vegeta doesn’t seem like a cheater,” that’s what her mother said, what they both believed, what he’d obviously told them. “You should talk to him.” She patted her head like she was some fitful toddler. “He needs a nice girl like you.”

On top of her parents, both Goku and Chi-Chi, even separated as they were, _defended_ Vegeta, begged her to give him a second chance. Goku, sure, he was as gullible as her mother, quoting Vegeta’s texts like they were gospel truth. Chi-Chi, on the other hand, had clearly lost her mind. 

Bulma knew they’d been hanging out when she was in classes. Her roommate was too stubborn to admit at the time that she and Vegeta were now friends. It wasn’t until ChiChi protected him and his belongings that Bulma realized the fact. Even so, it surprised her that after all the shit he pulled, Chi-Chi was, not quite defending him, but encouraging Bulma to hash things out. But why should she? He made it all too clear that he didn’t want to be with her even before he spent the night with some old fling, and that was on top of him lying about his addictions. Her family and friends’ delusions were starting to make her feel crazy.

How she managed to fall into a pit of scummy men, she didn’t understand. Maybe she was just too intimidating for a woman, and they all felt the need to lie and cheat just to overcome their own inadequacies, prove that despite her natural success, she was still just a female, a gender to be conquered. 

That’s where her mind sat as she met up with Chi-Chi’s yoga instructor on the same night as the label showcase, finally committing to a blind date, even though her roommate was far less into the idea than she was originally. Chi-Chi begged her to come to the big showcase, and she should have gone for Goku’s sake. Never had Bulma missed one of Goku’s gigs, big or small—not one martial arts match in high school, nor homecoming or prom, where she always went as his date, not a kami-damned concert in a coffee shop. Vegeta ruined it all, forcing her to avoid the biggest event, so far, of her best friend’s life out of spite. 

Still, she was mildly curious what a Buddha-loving, squirrel-feeding motherfucker had to offer. Surely, he was better than her trail of cheating vermin. Though the minute the date kicked off, Bulma knew Chi-Chi’s yoga man was not her man. He’d just returned from a silent retreat, which at first, Bulma thought was a joke. An entire weekend spent without talking, not a word! That’s what this guy was into? _Hell no!_ Bulma couldn’t stay silent even as he described it to her. It was torture. On top of already being anxious that her friends were at the concert, she couldn’t find the frame of mind to play nice with the guy. As he droned on and on about _the spiritual journey of turning down the volume of her mind_ with soft, tender tones, forcing her to crane her ear to catch his barely audible voice above the restaurant's normal babble, she broke. 

“Hey bud, I’m really sorry, but I just remembered, there’s this screamo concert I really want to attend, and I think I’m gonna cut this short. It’s not you! It’s my own tendency to open my mouth and have sounds come out. Glad to meet you though! Namaste!” 

Undoubtably, she’d get an earful from Chi-Chi over the whole thing, but fuck, the idea of Bulma dating a yogi was so dumb that Chi-Chi deserved some punishment for setting it up. She practically ran to her recently returned car—the very same she had to fork out four-hundred zeni to claim from the impound lot, thanks to Vegeta—and broke every speed limit, weaving in and out of traffic like it was a Formula One race, to get to the show.

***

Vegeta glowered in the corner of the greenroom—sipping vodka from a water bottle to hide his drinking from Nappa like an underage teen—when Raditz stumbled inside, followed by a horde of stupid groupies. Like some damned messiah among his acolytes, Raditz passed around a blunt and cheap cans of beer, raising his drink over his head.

“Let’s fucking party!” he shouted as he pierced the side of the can with a key, shotgunning its contents in one long chug. The girls followed suit, whooping as they guzzled their drinks and threw down their empty cans to crush beneath the soles of their Chucks and Vans.

Shit, he’d been spotted. Two of the girls made their way over to Vegeta’s corner with coy, drunken grins, but he was already up and out, pushing past the idiots into the backstage passageways where he found himself on the edge of the stage. He watched as their direct support finished their set and began to pack-up their equipment.

As the minutes counted down to a sold-out show at a two-thousand capacity venue, he scoped out the audience and recognized some faces from the label. Neither Beerus or Whis made the trip to West City, but Champa, Beerus’s brother and co-owner of the label was in attendance with his entire team, blocked off in a private booth in the balcony.

“You ready?” Kakarot clapped a hand on his shoulder. 

Vegeta shrugged away from him. No, he wasn’t fucking ready. He was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, an uncontrollable anger having seized his chest, making it difficult to breathe. The size of the venue had nothing to do with it. He’d played arenas and festivals with Icejin to crowds more than ten times the capacity. The Lookout was chicken shit, comparatively. It was Raditz; it was the fact that he’d run out of oxy; it was Eighteen’s high expectations and the label he’d once been a part of; it was Nappa watching him like he was some sneaky child that couldn’t be left unattended, Kakarot and his dopey hopefulness with Chi-Chi smiling at his hip. Bulma didn’t show up, and despite knowing she wouldn’t, he couldn’t help feeling disappointed and alone. Raditz, of course, ran his stupid mouth into the mic and played dumb little riffs on his guitar when he should have been tuning and sound checking. 

As the house music faded and the lights dimmed, the audience began to clap and cheer. The click of Nappa’s sticks counted them in as Vegeta took a deep breath and began to chug the opening riff.

These were the moments he lived for, an effortless mastery of his instrument and his art in front of thousands of people—where his mind honed down a singular path without resistance or overthinking or worries, the blood in his veins pulsing in tandem with the heavy beat of the drums to make him feel alive.

At least that’s how it should have felt... but Raditz was sloppy through the first song. The second song, he was clearly off tempo. And by the third... was he even playing the right song? Vegeta began to glance at Kakarot, who shrugged back uncomfortably and shook his head.

When Raditz forgot some of the lyrics, singing the first verse again, the weakened barricade of Vegeta’s temper burst wide, a surge of rage that flooded his entire being. There was no more thinking, just doing—an out of body experience where he was no longer in control of his actions. Mid-song, in a swift movement, Vegeta whipped the guitar strap over his head, wrapping both hands around the neck like a baseball bat; he swung the instrument at Raditz’s thick head. The sound of it, of the guitar screeching over the amps, the thwack of the heavy body crunching against Raditz’s skull echoed through the venue. Vegeta watched the guitar leave his fingertips, whirling like the blade of a crashing chopper into the awestruck crowd as Raditz hit the floor. His body crumpled with a limp thud. 

While the band went silent, the crowd erupted in a fit of roars, but before anyone could quite react, Vegeta was already storming off the stage in red-hot panic, not without punching the promoter in the face who tried to prevent him from leaving through the backdoor.

***

The show was sold out, that’s what the doorman claimed, but thankfully, Krillin responded to Bulma’s call and met her outside with a guest pass.

“Just in time. They started already!” he said.

The venue was packed, shoulder to shoulder, and Bulma artfully ducked and squeezed to get closer to the front. She could barely see over people’s heads, and as the crowd started to animate, she felt a bit claustrophobic being pushed and shoved between their sweaty bodies. Once she was close enough to see most of the band from the waist up, Bulma noticed Vegeta and Goku’s glances to each other, Raditz visibly sloppy and drunk. The crowd next to her toppled in a wave as people pushed hard from her right, nearly knocking them all to the floor at once. Trying to catch herself, she grabbed hold of the strangers that pressed up against her when, suddenly, a loud screech ripped through an amp assaulting her ears. Bulma looked up to see a guitar smash against the back of Raditz’s head, knocking him down before it spun into the crowd. The music stopped, and the audience erupted into a wall of noise, cheering, gasping, shouting—eventually egging on a fight in a chant. As Bulma was knocked around in the pandemonium of sweaty scenesters, she tried to push to the front of the stage. An advantage of being a small female, she could dip and dart through the crowd better than most.

Finally, she could see them, Goku and ChiChi at Raditz’s side, while half a dozen bouncers tried to levee an onrush of screaming hardcore kids, blocking them from the stage with hard shoves across the barricades. Blood pooled under Raditz’s unconscious head, leaving her speechless, frozen with her hands wrapped tightly around the metal gate. What had Vegeta done? Why? She knew he was unstable, but this was too much. He was crazy and dangerous. As people continued to swarm around her, crushing her abdomen against the barricade, she found her voice.

“Goku!” Bulma waved to catch her friend’s attention.

With a blank, wide-eyed gape, Goku gestured to the security guards that separated the audience from the stage to let her up. Lifting her over the barricade took three bouncers, two to hold back the crowd while the third pried her from their grips like the jaws of life. 

A dozen questions ached to leave her lips, but none seemed important with what her friends were dealing with. Chi-Chi paced back and forth on the phone with the paramedics, while Goku pulled his brother’s head into his lap and removed his shirt to press against the bleeding wound.

“Hey! Take this!” The bouncer that had lifted her onto the stage called to her, holding out Vegeta’s guitar.

There were bits of Raditz’s blood and hair stuck to the strings. She scrunched her nose and threaded it over her shoulder. “Goku what can I do? Is he okay?”

Her friend didn’t pay her any attention. Goku looked scared; his round eyes darted between Raditz’s unconscious face in his lap and Chi-Chi at his side, who snapped her phone shut and said the ambulance was on its way.

“We’ve got it, Bulma. Just go find that fucking psychopath! We’ll call you from the hospital,” Chi-Chi said, pointing toward the stage door.

Bulma exited through the back into the parking lot, not seeing anyone she recognized—save for Nappa who stood alongside some skinny blonde chick, both trying to calm down an angry man with a very broken nose. Bulma put the mangled remains of Vegeta’s guitar in her trunk, listening to the approaching sirens.

An ambulance and a squad car arrived at the venue just as Bulma shut herself inside the car and called him. Much to her surprise, Vegeta picked up, but instead of his voice, she could only make out a bunch of noise, loud music and yelling. Vegeta hung up almost as soon as he’d answered. Then, ten seconds later, he texted her an address.

It was an old, brick building in the heart of the warehouse district, where the only soul in sight was a large, dark-suited man who stood in front of an unmarked door. She called Vegeta again, to no response. Bulma looked up at the big man, who opened the door with a seamless nod. She entered a dim hallway, where the air hung thick and hot, and a repetitive pulsing beat vibrated around her from the floor and walls like they were alive. Two industrial double doors blasted open at the end of the hallway as the muffled, thumping beats of music became clear, and a group of girls dressed in metallic booty shorts and bikini tops emerged in a cloud of squeaky chatter. 

Bulma brushed past their shoulders and entered through the doors into a dark, vast warehouse lit only by glow sticks, hula hoops, and an array of laser lights that pierced the dancing crowd from its fifty foot ceilings. The gigantic room was full of scantily clad ravers dancing and jumping to the beat of a DJ at the front stage. Each side of the room was lined with platforms of dancers dressed in blue tights and black leotards, their heads covered by giant bunny masks. 

A colorful school bus was parked in the center of the main room, and she could see the silhouettes of people standing on its roof. If Vegeta was in the large room, she might be able to spot him from that vantage point. 

A skinny kid wearing green swim goggles assisted Bulma up the bus steps, holding her hand, each of his fingers covered in neon blinking rings. He grinned wide, nodding to the beat of the music as he welcomed her aboard. The seats of the bus had been removed, and ravers sat sprawled around the bus floor passing around a joint. Bulma looked up at the ropes of Purple LED lights that lined the ceiling and met in the middle where a ladder extended to an opening in the roof. Again, she was given assistance as a hand reached down through the opening as she approached the top of the ladder. Bulma gave a pink haired girl in a matching pink bikini a small smile as she gained her footing on the tin top, declining the joint that was extended in her direction with a shake of her head. 

She scanned the room for any sign of Vegeta’s black, spiky coif, but the room was too dim and chaotic—too many people and colorful, flashing lights swirled about on hula hoops, gloves and ropes; it was impossible to focus on anything.

Bulma descended the ladder, swatting away the glowing hand that was offered with a vexed groan as she stomped down the stairs and off the bus. She checked her phone again for a message from him, but there was nothing but a text from Chi-Chi saying they were on their way to the hospital. The frustration that had been building all week was stuck in the back of her throat as she tried to swallow a hot, prickly cry. She was angry about the situation: her pathetic attempt at a date, at Vegeta’s behavior since he’d returned from the Kame Islands that culminated in his attack on her friend, but mostly, she was angry at letting herself become hopelessly lost in a person she barely knew. That was the strangest, most infuriating part of it all. For weeks, they were inseparable, closed off in a tiny apartment, wrapped up in each other’s arms as if the outer world just served as context, a host for their existence.

As she looked down at Chi-Chi’s text, debating how to respond, she was blindsided by two sweaty arms that wrapped tightly around her neck and a body that tackled her with a momentum that almost knocked her to the floor. 

“Vegeta?” Bulma’s heart staggered with the rest of her body, catching his familiar scent. She grabbed him around his bare waist to keep from falling over. “What happened to your shirt?” 

He had buried his nose deep in her hair, inhaling sharply against her neck before he pulled away to look at her, reading her face with wild eyes, his brows relaxed for once and a hint of smile on his lips. Bulma almost didn’t recognize him. 

“I’ve been looking for you!” he cried, hugging her so tight around the neck that she had to clasp both hands around his biceps, pulling on him to breathe. A tingling sensation rose from her stomach causing her pulse to race as he clung to her, shirtless, huffing into her ear, “It’s fucking hot in here!”

A boy with a bob of dark brown hair stood in front of them, giggling.

“What’s going on?” Bulma looked between the two of them; though as she said it, the realization had already begun to dawn that they were high as fuck. “What did you guys take?” She frowned. 

The mystery boy held up his palms in a placating gesture, “He was having a nervous breakdown, so I gave him a little something to level him out. It’s fine.”

Vegeta had come around to stand next to her, with one arm still wound tightly around her neck. She gazed at his face, the blackness of his eyes so dilated that the whites were just small crescents glinting at the very edges; his skin was slick with sweat, and speedy energy oozed from his pores. “How much did you give him?”

“Too much,” the boy admitted with a dark smile. “That was my bad. Lesson learned, never give this one his re-up before he’s due. He’s a lush.”

Vegeta laughed against her ear as the boy reached in his pocket and held out his palm; a generic pill capsule rested in the center that was filled with some pale, pinkish substance. Bulma barely got a look at the pill before Vegeta snatched it from the guy’s hand and pressed it against her lips. The logical side of her brain nagged at the back of her skull—a voice that urged her to maintain her sanity, to just get back in touch with Chi-Chi, to let them know Vegeta’s whereabouts—a voice that dimmed quickly when Vegeta smiled wickedly and pulled his face in so close that their brows were touching. His arm still coiled around her neck closed off her good judgment. She tried to remind herself that he was a dangerous man, but as she peered into the inky depths of his eyes, she found herself parting her lips. Vegeta placed the pill on her tongue and slid his thumb across her mouth to gently rest under her chin as she swallowed it.

“Don’t look so worried,” the mystery boy shrugged. “It will be out of your system by morning.”

It wasn’t the pill, per se, that Bulma was most worried about as Vegeta continued to cling to her. It was him... he was out of his mind. He’d just beaten her friend with a guitar, and now he was half-naked, flying high on ecstasy in some off-the-grid warehouse, hanging on her with a vice grip, feeding her the same drugs without a thought. Straightedge, ha. He wasn’t stupid. He played that line for as long as he could in this town, but the truth reared its head with an ugly vengeance. He was a miserable addict, and everyone from North City knew it. Worse, they enabled him.

“Who are you?” she turned toward the peddler.

“Seventeen. I’m Eighteen’s brother,” he said, as if she should know who that was. When it was clear that the names didn’t ring a bell, he explained, “We work in A&R for GODs. My sister was his, uh...” The boy quirked his head toward Vegeta with an awkward shrug.

“Oh,” Bulma said. She was the girl from last weekend, the girl on the phone, the girl that started this whole goddamn mess.

“Shh!” Vegeta smiled and swatted at Seventeen lazily.

Kami, what the hell was she doing? Seventeen’s admission brought back all the angry rage Bulma had been trying to grapple with all week, trying to forget Vegeta and move on. She needed to leave, call Chi-Chi back, get away from him, go back to hating him. Kami, why did she take that pill?

Bulma ducked out of Vegeta’s grip and stormed toward the door she came through, but he was fast on her heels, grabbing her arm and whipping her back around to face him. He was gentle about it, running his palms over her shoulders with a puppy-dog pout on his face.

“Stay,” he said. “Twenty minutes, and if you still want to go...”

She searched his face. The high-ass grin was gone, but his features remained soft and pleading. It was hard to deny him a few minutes to explain himself. An explanation, that’s what she’d really wanted all week, but she was too angry to give him the chance. Chi-Chi even begged on his behalf, a miracle if there ever was one. Of course, that was before his actions tonight.

“Fine. I’ll stay for a minute, but I’m going outside to call Chi-Chi back first. They’re all at the hospital with Raditz, _if you care!_ ”

Vegeta failed to cover a self-satisfied grin as he followed her outside, lighting a smoke as she rang Chi-Chi’s cell. But Chi-Chi didn’t answer, only texted back that they were checking-in at the ER and would call her later when they had news. Bulma was preoccupied with her phone when Vegeta spoke up.

“You’re so pretty,” he said, a declaration so bizarre coming from him that Bulma almost dropped her phone. What the hell?

“You’re like a mermaid,” he went on, puffing on his cigarette as he leaned against the building watching her with doe like eyes. “The queen of all the mermaids.”

A smile forced its way across her lips; she couldn’t help it. Ecstasy was one hell of a drug. He was so pathetically cute in the moment. “What else?” Bulma asked. “Say something nice.”

“No,” he grinned, narrowing his soppy gaze, clearly trying to regain control over his mouth. “Not when you tell me to.”

Bulma tisked and rolled her eyes, finishing her text.

“I didn’t do it,” he blurted. Her attention snapped up from her phone to see his expression had morphed from a serene gaze to something serious, his eyes hard and pleading.

She clapped her phone shut. “Didn’t do what?” she asked, crossing her arms.

“I didn’t betray you,” Vegeta answered, almost eagerly. Kami, his eyes were screaming at her, they were so focused and dilated, like lasers would come shooting out from the inky depths and cut her in half. It was the same look he gave her the first night they met in the driveway.

She wanted so badly to believe him, but in all honesty, she barely knew him, no more now than that first night. In the short time they’d spent together, he kept her at arm’s length. It was all fucking, sleeping and video games, every personal question evaded by dark jokes and straight-up distractions.

The stories about him, corroborated by everyone she met whether they had a vendetta against him or not, they all warned her that Vegeta was damaged beyond repair. He was selfish, depressed, even dangerous, as he just proved. Even Nappa had finally given up, after fifteen years spent caring for him. 

But maybe those people, Nappa included, were missing the point. Most of his life was a secret, and he wasn’t giving anything away. The only story they knew was that he was a kid torn from his home country in a losing war, leaving him to be raised by a foreign government. At least that’s the story Bulma tried to remember when he was being an asshole. Maybe he wasn’t as selfish as they all thought. To her, that blistering look read like desperation; he so badly wanted some measure of control over his destiny, and he went about it with the ineptitude of a toddler refusing to eat his veggies.

She wanted to help him. More than anything, she wanted to crack the shell of his armor, get him to talk and tell her everything about his life. Not that she was a therapist—which is what he needed, ultimately. But it was still hard to believe that nobody that was close to him had managed to earn his trust and ask him about all the things he tried to hide behind his stupid misanthrope act. 

Nappa turned a blind eye most of the time. When things were good, he was good. But when confronted by Vegeta’s dark side, Nappa turned to judgment, burying him under the heavy weight of disappointment, which only made the stubborn boy thrash harder. 

Without real support, it was no wonder he turned to pills, to alcohol, to whatever he could get his hands on to escape his reality. They all indulged his behavior, like bad parents using a television as a babysitter only to complain about violence on TV teaching them bad things. He was truly alone—misguided and uncared for his entire life. And as much as he was an asshole, he deserved a companion that made an effort to understand him, to notice his cries for help and support him unconditionally. Both her parents and Goku did that for her. She was lucky like Vegeta wasn’t. 

As hard as it was, she needed to forgive him for the night with that girl. For the past week, she’d decided that no matter how fucked he was in the head, nobody cheated on Bulma Briefs. Not anymore... Even if they weren’t technically a couple, a point he so defiantly made the night before he ran off with what’s-her-face, she wasn’t going to let it go. But he was claiming vehemently that nothing happened with the other girl with an expression that, yes, was rolling to the max, but somehow seemed open and desperate. And, ultimately, he needed _somebody_ in his corner if he was ever going to make it.

“I want to believe you,” she said, trying to meet his pointed gaze. “But Vegeta, you stole my car and spent the night with her, drunk! What am I supposed to think? Even if you’re telling the truth about what happened that night, you still lied about uh... substances. Maybe not lied, directly, but you omitted the truth, and I had to find out from Zarbon. How do you expect me to trust you now?”

“Fuck!” Vegeta groaned. He flicked his cigarette to the curb and buried his face into her neck, hugging his arms around her head. “Believe me, Bulma. Just believe me! What do you need?” He tore his face away, his crazy eyes darting back and forth across hers as he held her head between his hands. “Do you want to get married? I’ll get fucking married right fucking now.”

“Oh my god! NO!” Was he insane? Bulma couldn’t help but snort a laugh as her insides turned to goo. Shit, thank god the molly hadn’t kicked in yet, or she might have said yes. She threw her arms around the madman, trying not to laugh too hard, or he might take offense.

“Kami, I don’t need to get married, Vegeta! Are you crazy!? A little commitment is all I’m asking for. Exclusivity! Take me on dates, tell me everything about you—the good, the bad, the mundane. Just talk to me!”

Though as soon as she looked up at him, the smirk that hooked his lips said she’d played right into his hand.

“Vegeta! You fucking asshole!” Bulma whacked her fist against his chest, but he just hopped between the balls of his feet, like some end-zone dance, smiling victoriously.

“Ha. So what, you’re like my girlfriend now?” he asked, his hands sliding down her back to rest on her hips, pulling her in close.

“Is that what you want? I mean, you’re high as hell. You’re not gonna wake up sober tomorrow and change your mind?”

He shook his head as he dipped his forehead to hers, staring into her eyes as his lips pecked against hers. Shit, he was super high, nothing like the person she knew. Why was she agreeing to this when he was rolling, especially after what he did to Raditz? She tried not to let herself give in, but wrapped so tightly against him, the smell of him, the things he was saying—even if the marriage thing was a complete joke, if she’d said yes, she couldn’t help but feel like he would have done it just to prove a point.

But what would her friends say after he did what he did at the concert? That thought began to cross her mind, tried to butt in, but she didn’t so much care now.

As she kissed Vegeta on the sidewalk outside some underground, warehouse rave, Bulma’s limbs began to grow cold. She pulled them away to look at them, analyzing her palms as if they weren’t her own. An icy tingle formed at the base of her neck and swept her brain like cold water from a faucet. 

“My hands are tingling.” Bulma looked up to Vegeta. He grasped shoulders and stared into her face with a knowing look as he watched the ecstasy finally flood her system. Bulma’s eyes followed from her palms up her arms as they became light, and a euphoric energy burst from the synapses in her head, her eyes finally resting on his as she broke out a serene grin.

Vegeta met her smile with his own, his hands that gripped her shoulders slid down her arms before he clutched her waist, sending a jolt of cool electricity up her spine. Bulma’s anxiety faded, and she felt nothing except the rapturous glee of the drug pulsing through her system and his hands circling around her hips, lifting every nerve to attention. She wrapped her tingling limbs around his neck and stepped forward. Pulling each other close, Bulma stood up on her tiptoes to reach his face, and he cocked his head to meet her lips. Every cell in her body danced as they pressed their mouths together. He trailed a hand up her back, tangling his fingers in her hair as he grabbed the back of her head and drove his tongue to meet hers. The taste of him was so familiar and so missed, she could spend the rest of the night like that, twisting and rolling their tongues together under the streetlights, every touch and breath sending shock waves through her system, enhancing the already euphoric grip the ecstasy had over her body.

But then he stopped. He grabbed her hand and began dragging her across the street.

“What are you doing? Where are we going?”

“A date,” he smirked over his shoulder.

“But what about your friend?”

“He’ll figure it out.”

Bulma let Vegeta lead her away, their fingers entwined as her mind disconnected further from reality, away from the dull thump of the warehouse behind them. Even the street lights seemed to lag behind the motion of her head, causing the them to streak in long glowing squiggles like an open camera shutter. His hand was warm, and she’d never seen him smile like this. It was perfect. Everything felt perfect. If happiness was a spectrum, tearing down the block with Vegeta rolling on molly was full-throttle, die-right-now perfect.


	14. Where I Come From

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three cheers for [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) for beta reading.

Bulma forgot about this place, the aquarium on the beach. She hadn’t been here since she was a kid. It was famous for its tunnel below the boardwalk, carved out beneath the main building—an underwater, cylindrical space lit in vibrant blue, full of creatures swimming in a one-eighty degree view above and around visitors’ heads. It was the only free part of the aquarium, open to the public twenty-four hours a day, and it was worth more than a ticket to the rest of the space. She didn’t recall anything inside, besides maybe a cheesy dolphin or seal show, whatever it was, but this spot she remembered vividly; it was the best part about trips here as a child with her parents, spinning her head up and around in wonder. Of course, at 2am on a cold, autumn night, besides the fish themselves, she and Vegeta were the only souls in sight. 

He found this place his first day in West City while he was skateboarding the path along the shore, and he visited often, especially at night, when there weren’t any mouth breathers and their whiney kids lingering about, he explained. The glowing lights in the tank lent an ethereal quality to the aquatic world around them, with nothing visible outside the blue tunnel but the blackness of night. 

His heavy arm was draped across her shoulders, his features soft, almost soothed as they surveyed the creatures that darted around them with dilated pupils. After a while, watching him became more interesting than the fish, and more often than not, she dialed her gaze to the corners of her eyes, trying to stare at his profile without drawing his attention. 

She’d gotten used to the molly by now and was finding it easier to digest the sensations around her, able to speak with some coherency, yet her mind still danced with the sweet eb and flow of serotonin and dopamine coursing through her system in warm waves, lighting her brain like a Christmas tree. 

“What’s your favorite?” Bulma finally broke the sweet silence. 

“My favorite fish?” Vegeta squinted, as if his mind was scanning through a menu. “Uh, tuna?”

“Not to eat, you dolt. To look at, in here!” Bulma swatted at his chest. 

He hummed for a second, like he was seriously pondering the question. “That one,” he finally answered and pointed at the floor of the aquarium to a patch of pebbles and sand.

“Which one? There’s no fish there.” 

“Exactly,” he grinned. “You can’t see that motherfucker. He’s camouflaged.”

Bulma squinted to figure out what he was pointing at, barely able to make out the two beady eyes that sat atop an ugly flatfish, buried in the sand.

“Seriously? Why?” He was clearly fucking with her, making fun of her stupid question. Nobody’s favorite fish was some lumpy flatfish with eyes on the side of its head.

“Cause you can’t see him!” Vegeta chimed in a tone that somehow seemed earnest. “He’s a master of disguise. Nobody bothers him. Every now and then, wham! He eats, and all these motherfuckers are none the wiser.” 

He gestured at the vast tank filled with predators and prey alike. He was right. That gnarly pancake had certainly evolved to master its circumstance in the chain of life—not a full-blown predator on display like a shark, but not prey to anything. It just existed, half buried in the sand, like he said, with none the wiser. 

It wasn’t the answer she was expecting, but he clearly put some thought into it, doing as she asked, indulging her ponderings even if they were mundane. It was probably the molly talking, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.

That's when it occurred to her: she could ask him anything tonight. He was at her mercy, with his fresh agreement to be more open and newfound desire to be her boyfriend. The drugs didn't hurt, either. She suspected that openness wouldn’t last through the morning, but as long as it did, she might be able to poke him and get some real answers to help solve the puzzle of a person she’d been dying to uncover. 

There were so many things she wanted to know. An endless list of questions constantly swarmed her mind before she’d even met him, back when he was just an unused MySpace profile and fodder for industry gossip. After the first night at the party, after she interrogated Nappa, after every day she’d spent with him since, questions kept popping up that she knew he would duck if he was sober. But what first? Something easy, surely. But what was easy?

“Tell me something about yourself that I don’t know,” she asked, tossing him a line.

Of course, he just turned and blinked, unable to come up with anything he was willing to divulge and said lazily, “My favorite color is blue.”

“Lame. Something serious.”

“My favorite food is-”

“Pizza rolls, probably,” Bulma cut him off. “Try harder.”

“I’ve never fucked a girl in an aquarium,” he smirked, strangling his arm tighter around her neck as he pressed his forehead against hers, trying to steal a kiss.

“Not a chance, buddy.” Bulma quickly inserted her fingers between them, pressing against his lips. That method of distraction was overplayed with him, and he knew it. He tossed his eyes to the ceiling as she squirmed out of his grip.

“What the fuck do you want to know?” he scowled as she pulled her hand away from his lips, but it wasn’t the normally hard glare he shot toward hard questions. Vegeta’s face was much softer on MDMA, almost teasing. 

She asked the first, easy-ish thing that came to mind. “Where did you go when you ran away?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t go anywhere.” 

“Bullshit!” Bulma grabbed him by the elbow, pulling on him to shake his attention. “You must have gone somewhere. You were a missing person for over three years. Eleven to fourteen, what were you doing?”

“What are you, my biographer?”

“Vegeta! You said you would be honest and tell me everything, so dish!” 

“I was captain of a shrimping boat,” he mused, widening his eyes with a conniving grin, trying to be clever.

“Fuck off! You’re not funny. Before you met Icejin, what were you doing?”

“Ugh, fine,” he huffed, his dilated gaze darting across the tank like he was annoyed, but he didn’t clam up like he usually did. He licked his lips before he responded. “I was making money… working for these dudes that owned an auto parts shop. Criminals, I guess you’d call them, but they were low budget, dumb as far as criminals go. I was stealing parts for them. Cars, eventually.”

“Why? You ditched school and ran away from home to steal cars?” Not that she was surprised. North City was the crime capital of the world, and with Vegeta’s disreputable temperament, he was a prime candidate to fall into that trap. It explained how he knew how to drive a stick shift. “And here I was thinking you just missed Nappa.”

“Psh, fuck no. Good riddance,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“Oh please, can you stop the tough guy act for once and just be real?”

“I am being real!” he whined, his voice pitching as he folded his arms across his bare chest in defense. “I don’t give a shit about Nappa. Why is everyone always saying that? I wanted to go back to Saiya, and that’s how I tried, but as a minor without paperwork, I couldn’t get a ticket out of this godforsaken country. Those guys paid me, got me a forged passport, but I was afraid to use it. If they saw through it, I’d be sent back to some group home if I was lucky, but more likely, I’d be sent to juvie until I turned eighteen. So, I chickened out.”

“You were trying to go back? But why... to find your family?” It was a stupid question. Why else would he want to go back to a country that didn’t exist? Still, his confession was surprising. Getting caught with a stolen passport was one thing, but Vegeta had much worse to fear if he actually succeeded in emigrating back to Tuffles. What would the Tuffles do to him if they found the last Saiyan royal on their turf, if that’s what he really was?

“That’s not why,” he snapped. The clipped tone meant he was growing agitated, but Bulma refused to give up a prime opportunity to milk out his past, even if it meant taking advantage of him in his compromised condition. She trudged ahead.

“No? So why then? Why would you want go back to that country if you weren’t sure what you were looking for? By that time, it wasn’t even your country anymore. The war ended the same year you came here. And you can Google what happened to your father. If he was really the king, you know he died in Plant.”

“I know, Bulma! I wasn’t looking for _him_!” He whipped back to face the tank, as if in his mind, she could fill in the wide gaps of his personal history and motives, and there was nothing more he had to say. He answered her question, done and done. 

She huffed dramatically, mirroring his stance with crossed arms from his periphery, waiting until he slowly dragged his attention back to her. With no less bite to his tone, he explained, “I don’t belong here. I thought maybe... I don’t know… I’d dreamt it or something, and If I went back, it would all be there, intact. But I was a stupid child. It doesn’t mean anything. So drop it.”

“But _who’d_ you think would be there? Your mother? Who was she? Because there’s no record of a wife and kid. The last king of Saiya was unmarried. That’s common knowledge. How do you know for sure that you’re his son?”

He glanced down at his wrist but refused to answer. 

“You said you’d be honest!” 

Bulma softened her glare, unfolding her arms as she tried to rein him in gently. Understanding over demands, _trust,_ she reminded herself. He needed to trust her, even as deceitfully as she was going about extracting the information. But hot damn, what surprised her most was that it didn’t seem to matter that he’d ingested enough molly to turn a pack of lions into mewling kittens—no matter how much euphoria Vegeta’s brain was flooded with, he could still fight it, rear his broody head with a simple pinch of his eyebrows.

“This,” he said, thrusting out his arm. 

The tattoo, sure, she’d inspected it—inspected all of them dozens of times as they laid in bed—but hadn’t thought anything of it. He’d gotten it redone recently, that was easy to tell. Faint lines from the old tattoo laid beneath the new ink like a shadow. 

“So? What does that say?”

“I’ve had it since I can remember. She wrapped a bit of cloth to cover it in public, and I didn’t think anything of it, like putting on gloves in the winter. Not until years later when I saw the symbol in a textbook in school. I did the research, and I know what it means. Only the royal family is branded like this. It faded overtime. Some random tattoo artist at a tour stop in Gingertown re-inked it maybe a year ago. Not very well, we were pretty fucked up.”

“That tattoo is the only thing you’re gauging this on?”

“No,” he scoffed, like he was offended that she’d question his lineage. 

She was, in a way, but not because she didn’t believe him. She’d looked up pictures of the Saiyan king, and she was almost certain he was right. Notwithstanding that most Saiyans looked alike from what she could tell, but the king looked _exactly_ like Vegeta. From the photos on the internet, especially the ones taken back when the king was close to Vegeta’s current age, they were practically twins—hosting the same thick flame of black hair and auburn highlights, the same high cheekbones, the same broody browline. He was the spitting image of Vegeta, just a bit taller and with facial hair. Still, she wondered, if Vegeta didn’t have to suffer the what-ifs of some life that escaped him, maybe he could move on.

“Then what’s the basis? Tell me.” Bulma reached for him, wrapping her palms around his fisted hands, trying to hold his fidgety person in place. Even though he faced her through most of the conversation, he kept shifting his weight, glancing at the fish with large, black pupils dialed to the corners of his eyes, like he was talking to them instead of her. But when she dared to question the validity of his lineage, he jetted those inky orbs to blaze a hole straight through her. 

“I’ve met him, the king. Twice I remember him coming to us, where we were living at the border. His pictures in textbooks, on the internet, Google him; he looks just like me, just like I remember him. She was pregnant after that, almost due when we were attacked.”

“I know the resemblance. I’ve looked him up. So it’s true then, you were a prince?” Even saying it felt odd. Sure kingdoms and monarchies still existed, but in the modern, Western world, they seemed so foreign, so antiquated. To be holding hands with a real life prince felt like some cheesy, animated fairy tail she used to watch as a child. And he was nothing like those characters. 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. At best, I was a bastard.”

Kami, it was hard to tell what he wanted. He circled around from point to point, never settling on what exactly he was searching for. Erecting walls down every path, he was committed to fortify himself inside a cage of bitter resentment. Did he want to be the last prince of Saiya or not? Was he trying to find his family or not? Did he even want _this_ —all this grueling effort he put into his music, aspiring to be some sort of rock star? Because it seemed like he hated it all the same. Maybe they were both just too high to extract a solid purpose from the conversation. But in a way, she didn’t care so much, so long as he kept spilling. The more he divulged, the better she could help him, eventually. 

“Well,” she said, “he gave you that brand and his name. That’s something, right?” 

“That’s nothing. He gave me his name as a first name, and Saiya doesn’t even exist. It doesn’t matter anymore. You were right the first time; it’s dead. The people are scattered across the planet. Kids like me and Kakarot and Raditz, we were children brought here from Arcosian refugee camps, and we’re are all that’s left.”

As much as she didn’t want to give him false hope, if there was a chance his mother really did survive the war, it was worth pursuing. Maybe his preteen self was onto something when he ran away. If they were alive and they could find each other, it could alter the direction his life was headed, which currently pointed toward a relapsing cycle of self-harm that, without help, would end him prematurely. 

“Your mother, how do you know for sure she’s dead? You were going to go back there to find her, right? So you must have thought there was a possibility. And if she was pregnant, your sibling could be out there too.” 

If she had a thermo radar, steam would be blowing from his pores in hot, blinding white. Even molly had its limits, because at the mere suggestion, his eyes widened wildly and his brows wrenched, like he was going to cry but thought better of it, quickly diverting the emotion to rage. He tore his hands away from her grip as he screamed:

“Because she would have come looking for me! And because I was there when they bombed us—I was fucking there, Bulma! You have no idea what that’s like. They whistle. An aerospace, genius bitch like you should know that’s what bombs do—like a sick warning that’s too late, engineered to terrify you, because by the time you hear them, you can’t escape. You’re fucking done. We were done within seconds out in the garden, listening to them _fucking whistle_ right before they ripped the ground beneath our feet. And you’re fucking deaf then! I couldn’t hear her asking me to get help, but I knew and I tried. But it was chaos in that town, and I was fucking five with shrapnel buried in thirty fucking places, worried I’d be shot by the troops that came in after the air raids, popping off anything that moved like we were rabbits. I hid in the dressing room of a theater where she used to play. Of all fucking places, it was the only thing not completely reduced to rubble. I fell asleep there, thinking I wasn’t ever going to wake up. And then I did wake up in a med tent in an Arcosian camp, and she wasn’t there. Nobody I knew was there. And I was on a plane within the month, practically dragged to North City, kicking and screaming. So are you finally satisfied, or do you have another stupid, fucking question?” he inhaled sharply, trying to catch his wind from his long rant or swallow any sign of weakness, it was hard to tell. She’d gotten carried away trying to dredge up his past and hit a faultline. He was about to blow.

“Okay! Shh, it’s okay.” She held out placating hands, trying to reach for him slowly, but he backed away, as if he was going to dart down the long corridor, but after a few backward steps, he stopped. He didn’t leave, just combed his fingers roughly through his hair before he re-crossed his arms and glared back at the fish tank. 

He didn’t explode. That was one hell of an improvement. They stood ten feet apart in silence, and she just watched him gaze at the aquarium with furrowed brows, lost in his own head. In a perfect world, Vegeta was meant to be a shark, not some reclusive flatfish hiding in the sand, and she’d make him realize that fact. 

***

Goku was half asleep when the nurse tapped his shoulder. “You’re the brother?” 

“Yeah,” he mumbled, trying to sit up without waking Chi-Chi, who’d passed out across the waiting room chairs, her head borrowing his thigh for a pillow.

“He’s resting now. You can come see him,” she said.

It seemed he’d have to wake her regardless. Goku ran his palm over her silky hair, and Chi-Chi reanimated with a groggy sigh before she pressed herself up, only to drop her head against his shoulder with a yawn as she rubbed an eye.

As long and painful as the night was, Goku was glad he didn’t have to go through it alone. The whole incident as he replayed it in his head felt surreal, like something from a movie. It happened so fast. One second, he was looking Vegeta in the eyes across the stage, trying to wordlessly temper his bandmate’s brewing rage. And the next, just as soon as he looked back over the crowd, the screech of an amp practically ripped his eardrums, and his brother hit the floor with a thud. 

It took a minute to register what actually went down outside his periphery. The crowd was in an uproar, rushing the stage, and when he glanced at the back of the house, Vegeta was gone, with Nappa chasing his heels. That’s when Goku looked back to his brother, and the seconds caught up with him. Realizing that Raditz was not just out cold, but bleeding; Goku finally unglued himself from a lapse in time to act, tossing his instrument to the floor as he rushed to Raditz’s side, trying to wake him with a shake. But he was limp and lifeless, blood beginning to puddle around his head. 

Maybe shock had set in, finally, because time sped up, and the rest of the details were fuzzy, escaping him completely. He’d taken off his shirt at some point to try to stop the bleeding, and he remembered Chi-Chi directing the paramedics into the space. Remembered her pulling him to his feet once they’d carted Raditz off on a stretcher, remembered her dragging him outside to follow the ambulance in her car, but he couldn’t speak. She chatted at him the entire ride, trying to keep him calm and focused, but Goku didn’t register a word. She’d given him one of his zip-ups that he must of tossed in the backseat weeks ago. He remembered putting that on as they walked from the parking ramp into the ER. 

He was a useless zombie, and she handled the whole ordeal with the swift, rational disposition of an army commander. When he’d finally snapped out of his daze, they’d carted Raditz off for CT scans and left Goku and Chi-Chi in the waiting room. That’s when time slowed to a standstill. They’d been waiting there for hours before the nurse came back.

“He’s awake,” Goku said. “You want to come?”

Chi-Chi nodded, and Goku took her hand as they followed the nurse through the halls into a room with eight or so beds separated by curtains. It wasn’t Raditz’s condition that surprised him with the severity of the situation—as rough as he appeared, wrapped up in a neck brace and monitors—but the two cops he was talking to which left Goku speechless.

“Are you the witnesses?” One of the officers asked as they approached the bed. Goku couldn’t do anything but nod. “Do you mind if we talk to you separately?” Chi-Chi squeezed his hand and looked up, shaking her head.

“We do mind,” she answered for him, after Goku just looked back at her dumbly. “There are two-thousand other witnesses you can interrogate. It’s been a long night, and we’d like to talk to Raditz now.”

Once the cops left them alone, Raditz was hardly worth talking to, fading in and out of his concussion, or whatever else he was on. The only thing his brother relayed was that he was _fucking fine_ and they should go home. He shooed them away, avoiding Chi-Chi’s game of twenty questions with a snarl and a wave. 

“Come back in the morning Kakarot. Doc has your number.”

Raditz only amped up his agitation, cursing under his breath when the doctor entered sporting a a solemn frown. She explained that his brother had a bad concussion, but that wasn’t all Raditz was suffering. Just like Vegeta, Raditz was riding the same train with a hearty blend of alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana coursing through his system. 

Goku and Chi-Chi left without him, told they could claim his brother tomorrow, once they were certain the drugs weren’t going to complicate his condition.

“You should stay here, Chi-Chi,” Goku said when she pulled into his driveway. “It’s almost 4am, and I’d worry if you drove home this late.” 

Chi-Chi nodded and turned off the car. Even if the statement was meant for her own wellbeing, he couldn’t bear her leaving him, not after tonight. The way she guided him through what would likely emerge as one of the worst nights of his life, he couldn’t fathom the thought of being left alone to stew about it. Whatever anesthetic his brain had conjured was wearing off, and emotions were creeping back into his head that he was too exhausted to properly sort through. She was a rock, the only solid thing that kept his thoughts from splintering off in every direction. 

In the morning, he woke next to her, watching her chest rise and fall with her fingers balled in a little fist against her lips, holding onto the blankets with a vice grip—an unconscious tactic she’d developed after so many nights sharing a bed with him, the most notorious blanket thief this side of the continent. As if she could sense him watching her, Chi-Chi’s eyelids slowly lifted, and behind her hand, her lips curved into a smile. 

That did it, Goku couldn’t stop his palm from blanketing her fist, pulling it away to uncover the lips behind them. His hand left hers to slip behind her head as he scooted close enough to kiss her. It had been too long, and the pressure of her velvety lips against his sent his heart to hammer against his chest, bursting the walls of a poorly fortified dam. His entire being surged with weeks of pent-up cravings as he flipped Chi-Chi to her back in one, swift motion, eliciting a tiny laugh from her throat that only melted him further against her. Goku moved to cover her dainty person beneath him as he kissed her again and again—against her lips, across her jaw, down the line of her collar before he threw the blankets over his own head and his mouth traveled across every inch of skin below the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay... So I've been trying to figure out for 13 chapters how to work in Vegeta's history organically, and the best thing that came to mind was: why don't I get him all hopped up on the happiest drug on the planet and have the most persistent interrogator hammer him with questions. Hopefully, that worked out okay! Feel free to let me know in the comments :)


	15. Blame Somebody Else

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you unendingly to [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) for beta reading this chapter. There might be a bit of a delay for the next one, because I've caught up to what I had written, and I'm also putting the finishing touches on my Big Bang fic for Vegebulocracy. I hope you read that fic too. It's called GUNSHIP and it should be posted in one week in full! By the way, ya'll should [join our discord](https://discord.gg/baFvKBq). Thanks for the comments so far on Cut from the Team. I've finally finished an outline for this fic, and it feels super amaze to finally know where this story is going! We're about halfway through.

She couldn’t sleep, not until cool, blue light began to bathe her bedroom walls. Ecstasy made it impossible. But while she could kick herself for ever taking it, she had to give the drug credit where it was due. The impenetrable wall that surrounded the mysterious Vegeta Ouji had finally been breached after she spent almost two months trying to break through. He guarded himself like a state secret, and before last night, reaching Vegeta was beginning to feel like a futile mission. She hadn’t managed to chisel out even the tiniest truth from his lips—nothing but omissions, distractions, and outright lies. And the intel she’d gleaned in bits and pieces from everyone he knew only complicated the plot. It was hard to know what was true.

He was arrogant and selfish. And his violent temper tested the limits of her good graces. She’d nearly given up. She’d told herself that she was prepared to write him off the way the rest of them did. But it wasn’t true. The moment his arms wrapped around her neck in that club, she knew she’d do anything to keep them there. He was her kryptonite. And the MDMA was his, at least for one evening. It mellowed Vegeta’s normally turbulent mood—at least enough to make it home without another tantrum after a long, rough night of doing what Vegeta did worst: confess his feelings and his past. 

It didn’t help that the story he told her was ten times worse than she felt for pulling it out of him. He was right; she’d never been bombed or shot at. Hell, she’d never been involved in anything worse than a hefty nick against her car door, which she was pretty sure was Chi-Chi’s doing. Sure, her roommate was perfect at most everything, but parking in narrow spaces was not one of those things.

Once she got Vegeta in the cab and tugged him away from his default, despondent lean against the opposite window, he surprised her—falling into her like a ragdoll, his head dropping into her lap. He was giving in, trusting her, letting her console him with long strokes of her fingers through his coarse hair. Lucky him, he even fell asleep.

As she sat there petting him, watching the streetlights scan the windows, her overactive mind ran through all the resources she had at her fingertips—census databases where she could quietly gain access, search algorithms she could write to scan them. There was information she would probably need to still hunt down, but his surname was enough to go on for now. It had to be hers. And there was the theater. He said she used to play, which meant she was a performer of some kind in a town near the Tuffle-Acrosian border. A musician like him, Bulma suspected. Whether his mother was alive or dead, she would find the truth. Worst case scenario, he’d get some closure, but best case, dubious as it was, he’d get back his family.

The doorman’s welcome was lukewarm when Bulma led him inside, groggy and shirtless. She practically dragged him into the elevator, bent under the warm weight of his arm that was draped across her shoulders. How was he so sleepy? He’d taken twice as much. Maybe it was the combination of alcohol that did him in, or stress, or both. 

Maybe sex would help her sleep. It was easier than she thought to convince him. She accosted him on the ride up and led him backward through the hallway with tiny steps, her arms tied around his neck, his body pulled against her tits and lips. That woke him up for ten thrilling minutes. But while he passed out immediately afterwards, she was stuck watching the numbers on her clock advance at a glacial pace. Her mind grew dull without growing tired. She’d barely scratched the surface of sleep—laying beneath leaden limbs and his head that was buried in the crook of her neck, breathing against her collarbone—when the pounding against her door began at… Bulma glared at the clock... fucking 10am!

“Bulma! Wake up!” Chi-Chi shouted. 

Bulma’s head peaked through the cracked door, fingers tugging at the rat nests that swarmed over her skull worse than her headache. She tried to rouse an emotion through her hollow brain, any emotion, but it was like she hosted absolutely zero feelings at all. Last night her mind burned hot and fast, neurons firing on every cylinder until they were completely depleted. And now, she was left scratching her head like an animal, hoping sensation would return throughout the day to make her feel less like a corpse. 

“How’s Raditz?” she mumbled, knowing she should care but didn’t. Not at the moment, anyway.

Chi-Chi eyed her suspiciously... maybe suspiciously. It was hard to tell. Maybe it was all in her dead head. 

“Just discharged. Goku’s picking him up as we speak.” 

Nope, it was definitely suspicion, Bulma was slow to realize as Chi-Chi tried to steal a glimpse into Bulma’s room over her shoulder. “Where’s Vegeta?” Chi-Chi asked. A perfectly groomed eyebrow arched beneath her bangs.

“Uh… dunno?” 

“Kami, Bulma! How hopeless are you?” Chi-Chi shoved her aside. Snarling like a wildcat, she crossed the room in two soundless leaps. Vegeta groaned and threw the blankets over his head as Chi-Chi pounced on top of him. She felled tiny punches against him like a rabid game of whack-a-mole as her screeching hit an octave that threatened to wake every dog in the complex. “You’re a fucking psycho, Vegeta! Kami, you could have killed him you crazy bastard! What the hell were you thinking!?”

“Chi-Chi, get off.” Bulma made a pathetic effort to yank her by the side of her t-shirt, but Chi-Chi gave up tossing fists and just sat there on top of him, clenching the comforter in frustration. Vegeta’s eyes ventured from behind the hem. His expression was rigid, but not angry, his eyes drawn toward the venomous spitfire of Chi-Chi’s face. Something unspoken, unavailable to Bulma passed between them, and she didn’t know whether to feel jealous or glad for Vegeta’s deferential silence. 

Chi-Chi’s lip curled back with her arm, and she slapped him hard across the cheek. Vegeta didn’t even flinch. He just took it. 

“Vegeta.” She exhaled his name in a long huff and slouched over him, palms pressed against shoulders. Her tone lost its bite and dipped closer to understanding when she said, “I’m not going to tell you what to do, but you know this could go very bad for you if he presses charges. I don’t need to be a fancy law student to tell you that there’s no way in seven hells you’d get off clean. More than two thousand people saw you hit him.”

“He’s pressing charges?” Vegeta asked. The first thing he’d said since his tirade at the aquarium, his voice was scratchy, barely a growl. 

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “There were cops with him. They wanted to talk to me and Goku, but I don’t–”

“Did you?” he cut her off with a sharp whine. His eyes pinched to panic as he sat up and shoved the girl from his frame. Chi-Chi landed on her ass with a yelp. “Fuck, Chi-Chi! Did you talk to them?”

“I didn’t!” she said, recovering her feet to whack him again against his chest as she rubbed her backside. “Vegeta, I wouldn’t do that to you,” Chi-Chi promised. “Raditz is going to be fine! A very bad bang on the head, but he’ll live. If it was a stranger that’d hit him, I’d tell him to sue your ass. But you’re my friend, whether you like it or not. And assault is five years minimum. Maybe you’d get out in two for good behavior, which you’re clearly incapable. Do you understand, though, how fucked this whole thing is? You really could have hurt him! And Raditz is his own person. If he chooses to prosecute you, there’s nothing Goku and I can do to help!”

Vegeta was frantic, barely listening. He leapt from the bed, uncaring that he was naked. He found a pair of underwear and jeans from Bulma’s floor, and was still struggling to pull the tight denim up his legs as he stormed out of the room, leaving both girls to look at each other with rosy cheeks.

“Chi-Chi, I need your car!” he shouted from the kitchen when he seemed to remember that they cabbed home from the aquarium, leaving Bulma’s car somewhere near the warehouses. 

“No!” Chi-Chi snarled. Hands on her hips, she glowered from the doorway. “If you’re going to confront the poor guy, I won’t let you.”

“Please Cheech? If Vegeta can just apologize–”

“ _Tch_... Pass!” Vegeta hissed, looking between both girls like they’d lost their minds. “I’m not kissing Raditz’s ass for this! It was his fault! Keys!”

“No!” both girls sang in unison. Chi-Chi cocked her head and a hip, and Bulma, unable to conjure a reaction of her own, mirrored her remonstration. To him, they probably looked like twins with their arms folded in front of their chests, glaring beneath their bangs. 

“Fucking bitches! I’m not gonna hurt him, if that’s what you’re whining about.”

“What exactly is your plan, then?” asked Chi-Chi.

“A talk… Man to man.” An impish grin stole his lips, and he crossed his arms to match them. “Surely, my _girlfriend_ can support that?” he mocked, wagging his eyebrows toward Bulma.

“Uh huh.” Chi-Chi turned to Bulma with a toss of her hand as if she’d given up hope. “He’s your fucking boy, Bulma. Talk some sense into him, will you? I’m going to back to bed.”

He _was_ her boy now, and she felt like shit that he was playing this game, fighting her friends and using a label she fought to get against her, the very next day! Kami, was he for real? She shouldn’t be surprised that the moment he woke up sober his tune would change. He didn’t _really_ want to be with her, did he? This was all a game of convenience for Vegeta, like the marriage joke when he was high, and she played right into it. Boyfriend was the perfect part to play now that he was in trouble with her friends.

“Vegeta, you can’t go see Raditz right now,” she sighed. “Please, can you leave him alone to recover?”

“Not if he’s gonna be a bitch about it. Fuck, Bulma, do you realize he could send me to prison? Prison! I have priors, and I’ll be fucking damned if I get locked up because of Raditz.”

He stopped whining long enough to tear open his phone, probably to call Raditz, or Goku more likely. 

“Stop it! Hang up!” Bulma charged him in a half-hearted fury. But too zapped to really deliver, she barely managed to bat the phone from his face. It skidded across the floor. They both watched the device dumbly as it thwacked and circled over the hardwoods. Her wits recovered a split second before his, and she snatched it up. Hearing her friend’s tired voice on the other end mutter _Hi Vegeta_ , Bulma responded with break toward the balcony, away from him. 

“Hi Goku. Vegeta’s really torn-up about the whole thing. He might come over to apologize today, if Raditz is up for it. How are you?”

“Uh, I’m okay, Bulma, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Bulma slammed the sliding glass door as Vegeta chased her across the living room, sticking her tongue out at him through the pane. She couldn’t hold the door for more than a second. Even hungover, Vegeta could open it with his pinkie against her puny strength. She let her weight drop, leaning sideways against the air in a pathetic attempt, the phone tucked against her shoulder. “Goku, can I talk to him?” 

“Yeah, of course. Look, Bulma, you can do whatever you want, but–”

Goku’s voice was cut off as Vegeta tore the door open with a force that sent her skipping across the concrete and ripped his phone from her ear. “I’ll see you in twenty minutes, Kakarot!”

****

His thick fingers accidentally landed between two buttons on the calculator, and Nappa slammed his fist against the desk in frustration—a quake that nearly capsized his empty coffee mug. He’d have to start all over. 

Perhaps the band’s accounting wasn’t the best task to tackle after the night he had. Hell, he shouldn’t be doing it at all. It was Vegeta’s job. But Kid just had to go and lose his kami-damned mind for the hundredth time. After knocking out Raditiz and breaking the promoter’s nose, Nappa had half a mind to track the punk down and have him committed. 

It took hours to smooth out all the drama at the venue—between the promoter, the venue’s owners, paramedics and cops, riled up fans, press junkies, and of course, Eighteen. Even the kami-damned record label executives from both Namek and GODs had to dish their two cents, shouting at Nappa and each other until they were blue in the face. While Piccolo lamented the public relations nightmare that was about to unfold, Champa decried the value of Namek Records. Worthless, he declared, without their most promising band. If Saiyans were breaking up, the deal to buy the piddly little label was off. 

Surprisingly, the band managed to come away almost unscathed, all things considered. According to his doctor, Raditz was going to be fine after a few days rest. And the promoter, Nappa managed to bribe from pressing charges with an under-the-table cash payout from Saiyan’s cut of the bar. Even Eighteen, after spitting vitriol from her cold, pitless soul, still delivered their full guarantee. Their merch sold, more so in the aftermath of Vegeta’s rampage than before. Fans swarmed on Krillin, buying up Saiyan t-shirts like they were going out of style. Go figure.

Piles of cash were littered all around the band’s ledger. Forgetting which pile was meant for who or what, Nappa swept them all back into one, untidy heap. He was about to snatch up the mug for more joe when the house’s peaceful quiet broke to a stampede of frantic thuds that charged up the stairs. Bulma’s pitchy shouts were easy to recognize. 

“Fuck me.” Nappa ran a heavy hand over his head. It seemed one more battle required his interference. 

Nappa swung open his bedroom door, and in one swift step, slammed the punk against the wall. Vegeta didn’t even see him coming. His thick forearm arm held him there by the neck, pressed against his throat. His other fisted his hoodie. 

“Where you headed, Vegeta?” 

Kid didn’t say anything, didn’t have to. Hate spewed from the pits of his dark eyes. Nappa could feel it in every fuming exhale from Vegeta’s flared nostrils that brushed the skin of his arm. 

He was a mess. Shadows traced his bloodshot eyes, not to mention the knicks and bruises leftover from his first fight with Raditz. He’d barely managed to get dressed, bare-chested underneath the unzipped hoodie on a fifty-degree day, and he smelled like a vodka distillery had a baby with a tobacco shop. 

Bulma didn’t look much better, standing two feet away in mismatched sweats with her fists clenched nervously to her chest. Her big blue orbs hosted the same dark rings, and her hair was frizzed like cotton candy. If he had to guess, the two rolled off an all-night bender and came straight here.

“You gonna go in there and threaten him?” Nappa asked, flicking his chin toward Raditz’s bedroom door. “Don’t be stupid, Kid. Walk away.”

“Can’t I talk to Raditz?”

Vegeta side-eyed the girl, and Nappa answered, “That’s up to him Briefs, but your rabid dog has to stay in the yard.”

With one last shove toward the staircase, Nappa released him. Kid staggered back a step or two, but Nappa knew better than to let down his guard. He braced himself, arms lifted like a linebacker ready to tackle the punk to the floor. But Briefs had grabbed Vegeta by the wrist and tugged his attention. Vegeta’s wrath turned on her. His entire body tensed, ready to explode them all into little pieces, until her hand reached out to cup his cheek. 

The second her hand took hold, Vegeta melted into her palm, and all his rage dissipated with a sharp hiss, like coals under water. She’d diverted the madness, somehow, to focus his attention. “Wait downstairs?” she asked.

The kid growled his displeasure but retreated down the stairs to sulk without a fight. Nappa shook his head in disbelief.

“How the fuck did you do that?”

“What?” Briefs just blinked at him. 

“You just defused a bomb by touching it.” 

Maybe Briefs didn’t understand the miracle he’d just witnessed. For fifteen years, he’d been unable to curb even the smallest fit. Kid threw tantrums at the arcade when he lost or machines ate his tokens. Kid threw tantrums whenever Icejin members teased him or gave him any kind of lip. Kid threw tantrums when Nappa ignored his initial tantrums. He grew up to be a twenty-two year old toddler, selfish and begging for attention in the brattiest way possible.

What if Briefs was actually getting through to him? He hoped for his own sake as much as Vegeta’s that she could… without him taking her down too. Nappa didn’t want to know what kind of debauchery Vegeta dragged her into last night, or he might just try to talk her down again, remind her for what felt like the tenth time that he was not a wise target for someone with her potential. But Bulma Briefs was one helluva smart person, and as charming as Vegeta could be when it suited his needs, Nappa was almost certain that she wouldn’t let him destroy her. As tired as Briefs appeared, she straightened her posture and frowned at Nappa, waiting for him to grant passage to Raditz’s bedroom.

“Be my guest.” Nappa waved toward the hall before retiring to his initial task.

***

“Raditz, it’s me, Bulma. Can I come in?” Bulma cracked open Raditz’s door with a soft knock, adjusting her eyes to the darkness. His shades were drawn, and only the glow of the flickering television lit his face on the far side of the bedroom. 

“Hey, girl. Of course.” Raditz sat up and muted the TV. 

She popped a squat on the bed when he moved to give her room. _Home Movies_ reruns were airing on Adult Swim, and she watched the muted scenes play out for a few moments before she found the courage to look at him. It wasn’t as bad as she thought. He seemed tired, more than anything else. No new scrapes or bruises, no bandages, no braces. But even so, now that she was here, guilt robbed her of her words. 

Raditz broke the tension with a rough tussle of her hair. “Come on, Bulma. Do I look _that_ bad?”

Bulma chuckled. “No worse than usual for a big ‘ol ugloid.”

Raditz laughed and tipped his head, carefully parting his hair near the back of his crown. “Check that out,” he said, revealing three, tiny stitches.

“That’s it? Man, all that blood, I thought you’d cracked your skull wide open like humpty dumpty.”

“I know, right?” he laughed. “Doc said head wounds are like that. I’ve got some thin blood it seems. But it’s just a little cut. Didn’t even shave any of my hair.”

“Thank Kami! That would be a crime in itself!” Bulma smiled as she watched him fluff his favorite asset back over his shoulders. 

Silence bloomed again, and Bulma turned back to the TV pretending to watch the cartoon as she searched for a decent segue. She’d never been nervous around Raditz before. But in the moment, it was awkward, like she hardly knew him. While they hated each other as little kids—back when he was three feet tall and didn’t speak much English, years before he’d adopted this goofy, give-no-fucks demeanor—they were good friends now. It was around middle school when Raditz changed and began to proffer a weird, older brother vibe mixed with constant come-ons. He played the good-natured clown. Quirky, hunky, party boy extraordinaire, that was Raditz’s reputation. But it was as much a front as Vegeta’s grumpy, snobbish ego. Underneath it all, Raditz was a perceptive and sensitive person, and every now and then, he’d let his guard down to remind her who he really was. 

“I’m not pressing charges.” He broke the awkward air. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

Bulma slowly dragged her gaze from the TV to meet him. Despite the earnest tone, his face twitched with a smile. “Come on, girl,” he said with a little shove against her shoulder. “I’ve known you since you were in preschool. You’re practically my little sister. You can’t hide from me.”

“But why? I mean…Thank you.” Bulma twined her palms in her lap. Why did she feel so guilty? She didn’t hit him, but she felt terrible for representing Vegeta on this point. Of course, she didn’t want Vegeta to be arrested. But at the same time, Raditz didn’t deserve to be his punching bag. 

“Raditz,” she asked. “Why are you letting him get away with it?”

“Because it’s a cheap shot.” Raditz shrugged off the question like it was nothing. “I can handle Vegeta on my own. I don’t need to go crying to the cops about it.”

“Such a gangster.”

“Yeah, I’m a motherfucking boss.” He beat a fist against his chest. “A merciful one, too. Vegeta owes me… big. You tell him that.”

“I will,” Bulma nodded. But was that it? Raditz was playing to some gangster bro-code, not wanting to rat on his assailant because it looked weak? “I’m curious, though. You guys have been at each other’s throats since he got here. I know you’re just a fluffy lug at the end of the day, but don’t you have any desire to punish him?”

“Punish?” Raditz cocked his head like he didn’t understand the question. “I mean, I’m not just gonna bend over, if that’s what you’re getting at. But I’m not gonna ruin the one thing I have going for me either.” He crossed his arms. Huffing as his shoulders shrugged toward his ears, he went on. “Look Bulma, I’ve accepted it. This is _their_ band now, Vegeta and Kakarot. They have the vision, the talent, the fucking energy to make this work for all of us. Did you hear the rough mix?” The way his voice lifted as he asked the question was almost giddy.

“No,” she said. Nobody even told her there was a rough mix floating around.

“Ask them to show you. There’s a disk in the van.” Raditz clapped his hands together as his eyes popped. “I’m telling you, Bulma, I can’t stop playing it. Apparently Namek is being bought by GODs, and from what Nappa’s told me, our contract is by far the fattest asset Piccolo’s got for sale. We’ll be kings on a major label. Whatever Kakarot and that dipshit are doing is working, so from now on, I’m just along for the ride.” His hands sliced the air as he relaxed against his pillows.

Bulma couldn’t help but return his excited grin. “You’re a fucking gem, Raditz.”

“I’m a solid ten. No question.” 

She whacked his arm playfully, and he picked up the remote to unmute his show when a loud crash came from the floor below. Then another, and another.

Bulma and Raditz dialed their wide eyes to each other’s, listening to shit break below them. Nappa threw open his bedroom door across the hall with a thwack. His thunderous steps paraded the hallway and descended the stairs with the spirit of a rampaging rhino. The whole house shook under his feet, drowning out the war that waged below.

“Goddammit, Vegeta!” Bulma groaned. Raditz just shrugged and went back to his programming. 

With the flurry of booms downstairs, Bulma imagined the walls of the rickety house igniting all around them like a tinderbox. Her feet barely touched the carpet as she sprinted down the hallway. But when she reached the stairs, Nappa was propped with an elbow against the bannister, smiling, watching whatever was happening before him with the awed gape of a fanatical sports fan.

“Shit!” Bulma gasped. Vegeta and Goku were tearing apart the living room, practically knotted together as they wrestled. Sharp smacks and thuds sounded like claps of thunder as they kicked, punched, and rolled over one another, knocking into every piece of furniture. Both lamps had crashed against the floor, and the PlayStation was hanging dangerously over the edge of the TV stand. “What the fuck! Nappa aren’t you going to stop them?”

“Are you kidding me? I’m about to make some popcorn! Go Kakarot!” Nappa pumped a fist into the air.

“Seriously?!” 

Goku wasn’t playing around. She’d never seen him this angry. All of his high school tournaments felt more like ballets than fights, trained athletes dancing with each other in a graceful, respectable formula. Nobody was going to get hurt. But with Vegeta, a person who was essentially a scrappy streetfighter with zero professional training and more rage than a herd of wildebeests, things were different. They both abandoned any pretense of this being civil and threw each other hard and fast against the floor and furniture, unleashing punches with heavy whacks that made her cringe. Goku had the upper hand. Unpredictable as his opponent was, he was physically bigger, trained to think two steps ahead, and not so clouded by raw fury, better able to conserve his energy and outmaneuver Vegeta’s attacks. Not to mention, Goku wasn’t hungover. 

When Vegeta tackled him to his back, trying to throw his weight behind a heavy hit, Goku kicked up a foot and launched Vegeta into the hearth of the fireplace. The back of Vegeta’s head contacted the sharp edge of the bricks with a hearty conk. Goku’s eyes practically popped from his skull at the sound. On a dime, he reverted back to his normal, gentle self.

“Oh shit! Are you okay?” He tugged Vegeta up by his hoodie to sit. 

Vegeta just clasped a hand to the back of his skull and glared at him darkly. “Are we even?” he croaked.

Bulma couldn’t see his face, but she heard his reply. “Not quite,” Goku said, his voice flat, almost cold. “But we’re getting there.” His big hand shook Vegeta lightly by the shoulder before he tried to pull him in for a hug. Whether Goku believed it or not, he and his brother had something in common. Suckers, they could be at times. They were forgiving to a fault. Vegeta didn’t deserve leniency from Raditz, and he especially didn’t deserve a damn hug from Goku. But the the fact that they were both giving him a second or third chance spoke volumes. Vegeta didn’t warrant any of it, and he was loathe to accept it. He swatted and squirmed in Goku’s arms before he gave up fighting and glared at her, his dark eyes pouting from where he was bound tightly to Goku’s shoulder.


	16. When You're On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hiatus! I was getting all my ducks in a row for the Vegebulocracy Big Bang (which, btw, I hope you read!! There's a ton of cool stories and art released in full for this event. Mine is called GUNSHIP and it's very different from CFTT. I was writing it at the same time as the early chapters of CFTT, and it is as much a baby of mine as this story, but like a good mother, I don't play favorites). 
> 
> I hope to keep releasing CFTT chapters weekly, but I will admit that I've caught up to my chapters in queue, and I want to keep the quality true to form. But I will try my best to keep up the consistency! There's a chapter goal now instead of a question mark, which means, I HAVE AN OUTLINE!!! WOOT! Anyways, hope you like this one, and either way, let me know in the comments :)
> 
> Thanks for the beta read [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan)!

Vegeta pulled his sunglasses over his eyes, which did little to curb his hangover. It was almost high noon, and the sun reflected off the water’s surface in glittering waves that stretched toward the horizon. 

“Welcome, sailor.” The crazy blonde tossed him a rope almost as thick as his arm. “You know how to tie-up a boat?”

“Not really,” Vegeta answered and began coiling the heavy thing around a post anyway. Good enough, he guessed when Launch didn’t pay any attention and retreated to the inner cabin. He stepped aboard and traced her steps across the textured, fiberglass deck. Everything smelled damp and salty. Not that it was a bad smell, per se, not for a kid that spent most of his life in a frozen, urban hellscape. The scent of seawater was almost pleasant. 

Inside the boat’s cabin was a full living space, complete with a kitchen, a small sitting area, and what he assumed was a bed and bath at the back. It was messy and a little run down. Dirty dishes filled the rust-stained sink, and the laminate was peeling off the countertops.

“Do you live here?” he asked.

“Only part time.” Launch spun around, her back pressed against the cabinets. She tossed her frizzy hair over her shoulder, grinning like hard candy. “What’ll it be, shortie?”

Vegeta pressed his lips and dug in his coat pocket for the wad of cash Nappa had hesitantly handed over. Amazing, almost two grand he’d made from playing two and a half songs, and he was about to cash in. “Everything you’ve got.”

Launch’s eyes bugged wide at the stack. Spinning to the cupboard behind her, she pulled out a fist-sized bottle of pills and dumped them onto the counter in a heap. 

“Five z’s a pill,” she said, and proceeded to shove the little tablets into a separate pile, five by five as she counted. “That’s all of them, ninety-eight. I’ll throw in the last three for free, so that’s what, 450?” 

It was 475 zeni, actually, but the bimbo’s math worked in his favor.

“Are there more coming?” Not that the mountain of oxy wasn’t enough to satiate him for a time, he just wondered for how long exactly. Rationing was never a strong suit, especially when he made overzealous assumptions about supply. Maybe she had access to alternatives. “Where do you get them from?”

“My dad. Since his back surgery, docs have been throwing him this shit like candy. He uses a fraction, so I sell the rest, lucky for you. Just gotta wait another month to re-up.”

Vegeta did the math, that was roughly 60mg per day. Not great, but with that kind of foresight, he’d survive. “I take it the blow’s not from daddy too?”

Launch quirked a brow. “Why? You a cop, or you want some?” 

“Neither, just curious. You sold some to my ex.” He didn’t know why he was asking. He’d sworn off skiing the alps, but for some reason, he wanted to know exactly the person he was dealing with. Selling her dad’s meds, that was one thing, but where was she getting the hard drugs? Not that he was looking out for Eighteen, but coke was usually cut, and depending on with what and how far down the line, that shit could kill. Launch seemed like an amateur that wouldn’t know the difference, and Eighteen would be living here soon enough.

“Oh, yeah? That was your girlfriend, the icy blonde?” She lewdly licked her lips, but seeing that Vegeta wasn’t amused, her gaze flitted back to the stack of pills and she answered his question. “I found three bricks washed up on the shore a year ago. Pure as the driven snow, this shit must of fell right off a cartel’s cruiser. Shortie, tell me that ain’t winning the lottery!”

As long as nobody came looking for it, he supposed she was right. 

Speaking of blonde bitches, as if summoned, Eighteen was calling him… again. Vegeta didn’t answer, again. He paid for the oxy, crushed a whole pill, and disembarked. Finally, after four fucking days without it, his head was straight, and he found the will to call her back. The phone rang as his feet beat against the rickety planks of the dock. 

“Shit, I thought you were dead.” Eighteen droned.

“Cool joke. Not yet. What do you want?”

“Are you watching MTV?”

What a stupid question. “Of course, I’m screaming my tits off at Carson Daly as we speak. Why?” 

“Well, you’re on it.” She sounded annoyed, but she always sounded annoyed. “Gotta say, Vegeta, you’re a clever piece of shit. If you weren’t famous before, you are now, and so is your band.”

What the hell was Eighteen smoking? “Famous? How so?”

“How so!? Don’t play dumb. Your little stunt drew a lot of attention. Everyone and their grandma is talking about the former Icejin-baby and his bad temper. KO’ing your frontman with your guitar at a major-label showcase was bound to make some headlines, you idiot.”

He hardly used the internet, so he gave less than a fuck about what its piss-ant publications had to say about his break from sanity. But cable, MTV News? Shit. Though the way Eighteen described the situation, she made it sound almost beneficial. 

“Whis wants to confer tomorrow,” she said. “I need you on a plane tonight. The whole band, if you can get them. You got management?”

“Uh…” Vegeta tried to digest the lines between her demands. From what he could gather, Saiyans were blowing up the feeds, and Whis was smart enough to know that negative attention was attention nonetheless. According to Nappa, the GODs label was buying up Namek Records, which meant their contract was about to be hastily renegotiated. And Whis wanted it done before the buzz died, a sentiment that was mutually beneficial. Negotiating with the man, however, wasn’t something Vegeta was equipped to do himself. Whis was a former prosecutor, and he’d squeeze them dry, given the chance. 

“I have a manager,” Vegeta lied. “I’ll text you her info shortly. See you tonight.”

****

Vegeta waited in the parking lot outside the concrete structure where Bulma spent most days coding, tinkering with robots, blowing shit up. That’s what he guessed. He didn’t really know what she did and never asked, mostly tuned out her scientific babble.

Kakarot, Nappa, and Chi-Chi all answered his calls, and every plan was perfectly laid to take them to North City that night. Neither Raditz nor Nappa were coming, thank Kami. Nappa had his stores to run and couldn’t find personnel last minute, and Raditz was still in recovery. But Kakarot, he was all aboard, even more so when Vegeta explained that he hired Chi-Chi to be their manager.

That only left Bulma. She had nothing to do with the band’s operation. But the truth was, after his unexpected meltdown—admitting things to Bulma he hadn’t consciously admitted to himself in a rush of drug-induced stupidity—he couldn’t bare to go back to North without her. After more than fifteen years in that place, he was hard-pressed to conjure a memory that was pleasant. From group homes, to Icejin, to the county jail—that city was dark, begging to trap him, and for the past few days, he was undoubtedly vulnerable to getting caught in its web. Even imagining a night spent without Bulma in sunny West choked his breath and sent his pulse to race in a panic. It was weak, he knew, relying on a girl like that, but it was temporary. He’d get his head together once shit lined up. In the meantime, he was embracing her like a human benzo.

Impatiently, he huffed on his cigarette until Bulma emerged from science building’s big oak doors. Antsy as he was, he settled to watch her from the parking lot as she chatted with acquaintances outside. Bulma had a whole life that wasn’t him, he kept forgetting. And seeing her bathe in it was a challenge, trying to level the scale between proud satisfaction and needing jealousy. 

He was glad the little smartass had her own life. It meant the inevitable breakup would be easier for her to manage, whatever the cause would be. Some shitstorm always loomed on his horizon. Regardless, watching her hug her classmates goodbye, he had to stifle the urge to punch them in their throats, man or woman, he didn’t give a fuck. But he swallowed the feeling and waited patiently until she noticed him leaning against her car in the parking lot. Her face lit-up with a grin that almost buckled his knees as she skipped toward him. 

“What are you doing here?” she squealed, throwing her arms around his neck to bury him in a kiss.

He didn’t answer immediately. He kissed her back with a heavy press of his lips against hers. He could feel her smiling against his mouth. The soft upturn of her lips sent his stomach to practically claw itself apart. A huff left his nostrils as he tore his face away to stuff his nose in her neck for a moment.

“Come with me to North tonight,” he said into her shoulder before he peeled his face up to look at her. 

“North? I can’t. I have a presentation tomorrow–”

“You’re smart. Skip it.” Vegeta bit his lip and waited. 

Her big eyes skimmed across his own, and his stomach felt like it’d been pumped full of helium as it lifted, light and tingling when she smiled and ran her palm over his cheek. 

“Ok,” she nodded. “I’ll figure something out.” Her fingers dipped into his hair at the back of his head, pulling him in again with a little tug. 

***

By the skin of their teeth, they managed to make their flight just as the doors were closing. Bulma recognized Seventeen immediately, sat next to who was obviously his twin sister, the infamous Eighteen. Bulma could recognize her now as blonde girl from the concert that was with Nappa in the parking lot. Whether the girl was pissed about Bulma’s presence, or at Vegeta, or the fact that they were late, it was hard to tell. She glowered at their whole crew. Seventeen tossed them a fist of metal horns with the same frosty expression. Maybe that's just how he was off of molly, or maybe he was mad that she and Vegeta abandoned him at the rave. Either way, this whole six hour flight was bound to be bumpy with the surly twins across the aisle. 

Vegeta sat against the window, putting Bulma between him and the twins, avoiding his own drama as usual. Goku and Chi-Chi sat in front of them. 

Before the plane pulled away from the gate, Goku spun around, pressing his face between the narrow gap between his and Chi-Chi’s seats. His eyes were wide with a juicy secret. “Vegeta, I forgot to tell you, Eighteen and Krillin hooked up after the concert!” His voice was a Goku-level whisper, which meant he was talking louder than most people spoke normally, just in a raspy voice.

Vegeta twisted his face into a scowl. “What is your point?”

“Nothin’!” Goku frowned as if he was trying to quickly come up with one and settled for, “She must be into short guys, though, right?”

Vegeta roughly kicked the back of Goku’s seat, and Chi-Chi scolded him through gritted teeth. “Goku, stop gossiping! People can hear you.” 

Bulma dared to steal a glance at the twins. Seventeen snickered into his lap with a shake of his head, and Eighteen flicked her face toward the window, the barest hint of a smirk on her lips.

As the flight got going, the group grew more excited. Goku and Chi-Chi took turns pressing their faces between their seats, chatting animatedly at Vegeta and Bulma behind them. It didn’t help that their first-class tickets got them free drinks, of which they all took full advantage. She was a little uneasy drinking with him, but Vegeta seemed to be in good spirits; his hand rested on her thigh as he interjected his clever little retorts every time poor Goku opened his mouth.

At first, she thought maybe the drinks were playing tricks with her head, but Bulma couldn’t help but notice how many passengers’ eyes would linger on Vegeta as they passed. Some performing obvious double takes as they jerked their heads back, whispering to each other in low voices. Her suspicions were confirmed when halfway through the flight, Bulma caught a shadow from her periphery that wasn’t moving along down the aisle. She turned to face a kid, a Saiyan kid with the telltale black, spiky hair and black eyes that stood at her elbow. A leather booklet of CDs and a sharpie were bound tightly in his arms.

“Hi,” Bulma said with a smile.

“Oh.. um.. Hi.” The boy barely looked up from the items that were clenched in his white knuckles. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I’m a big fan, and I have all your CDs. I was wondering if you could sign some?” He opened the booklet to a page that held two Icejin albums and extended it toward Vegeta. The asshole let the boy’s shaking hands linger in the air, and Bulma jabbed him with her elbow as she passed the booklet to him. The poor kid dropped the sharpie, and it rolled under their chairs. Thankfully the passengers directly behind them retrieved it, and the boy blushed with mortification as he handed it to Bulma again. 

Kami, Vegeta could be such a royal prick sometimes. She understood his aversion to slutty groupies who probably didn’t know which end of a guitar was up, but a little kid?

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“My name? Uh, it’s Cabba,” he said. He bit his lip as he watched Vegeta scribble his signature over the disks. 

“Cabba, how old are you?” 

“Eleven.” 

“You like heavy metal?”

“Hmm?” He seemed confused by her question.

“Everyone in North likes metal, Bulma,” Vegeta inserted. “That’s like asking the kid if he likes food and drink.” He tossed the CD book into her lap and unscrewed the cap of another tiny bottle of whiskey.

Bulma shot an annoyed glare at her callous boyfriend before she looked up at Cabba and smiled. “Where are you sitting, Cabba? I need to get up and move. I’ll walk you back.”

She escorted the shy kid back to his seat and traded emails, promising to send him concert tickets as soon as Vegeta’s new band scheduled a show in North. He seemed to perk up at the idea. 

“You could be nicer to your fans,” she scolded Vegeta when she returned. 

“Why?” he grumbled. He still had the marker and was drawing a penis on the back of Goku’s arm where he was passed out with his elbow resting between the seats. 

“What do you mean why? Fans are the only reason you’re relevant, you jackass.” 

Vegeta seemed to take for granted that he was actually famous in North City. Just trying to leave the airport was a hassle as he was constantly approached by excited fans of all ages that he ignored as if he didn’t see them. And once they exited security into the freezing night air toward the limo Eighteen had procured, it was hard to avoid the bright flashes of cameras that lit the night sky like an approaching storm.

The driver held the door, and Bulma was the first to hop inside after Eighteen, finding herself sitting across from the girl. She wasn’t as intimidating as Bulma imagined. In fact, Eighteen seemed more wary of her, ducking Bulma’s gaze as she turned to watch the rest of them climb inside the car.

“You and I haven’t properly met,” Bulma said. Trying to be the bigger person, she extended her hand to the sour faced girl. “Bulma Briefs.”

Eighteen snapped her head in Bulma’s direction. Her frosty, blue eyes flashed wide with recognition as she placed her palm firmly in Bulma’s hand. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. Her dry, even tone offered the barest hint of surprise. “Briefs as in Capsule Corp?”

Bulma nodded, unsure what to make of the girl’s reaction.

“I believe our fathers are in the same line of work. Mine is the head engineer at the Red Ribbon Corporation.”

“No shit? What a small fucking world. Your father is Dr. Gero?” Bulma had been in the business long enough to know immediately who the twins father was. Hell, she’d probably met them before at some conference or convention as a kid and just didn’t remember.

Eighteen tucked her hair behind her ear and traded glances with her brother. “Unfortunately.”

While both Capsule Corp and Red Ribbon were aerospace companies, they were very different breeds. Capsule Corp made its fortune on commercial planes and jets like the one they flew here. Advanced, reusable spacecrafts were her father’s current bucket list item. He was a Star Trek junkie whose inventions’ sole purpose was the pursuit of knowledge—to improve the human experience, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Red Ribbon, on the other hand, specialized in _so-called defense_ , in destruction—they built ballistic missiles and drones, and satellites that pointed toward Earth, down to the square foot where these unmanned abominations would strike. They sold them to the highest bidders, enabling wars across the globe with the ability to wipe out entire cities hundreds of miles away with an Xbox controller. 

Did Vegeta know that’s what Eighteen’s father did for a living? It wouldn’t surprise her if those were the very weapons that destroyed his home. She glanced to him, but he was busy trying to pry the foil off a bottle of champagne that was clenched between his thighs, ignoring the conversation.

“Unfortunately?” Bulma tipped her head at the twins. Like most of the northerners, they were hard to read, more so than Vegeta. At least he expressed himself through wild mood swings. These two seemed completely devoid of emotions at all, their robotic tones and features disconnected from their words.

“Our father is a greedy twat,” Eighteen answered without making eye contact. “We no longer associate.”

Bulma startled when the bottle of champagne popped next to her, and Eighteen quickly nabbed it to take a swig, leaving Vegeta to scowl at his empty hands. 

For the remaining duration of the ride, Bulma, Chi-Chi and Goku’s faces were all plastered to the windows of their limo. Vegeta was pressed up against her with a foot hooked around her ankle, but for the most part, he ignored her. The three northern malcontents grumbled about the long flight, the annoying fans, and the cold weather as they passed the fine bottle of champagne between them. 

North City was a sight to behold. The streets, even this time of year, were bustling with street carts and shops. The citizens that were bundled up in thick coats, hats and scarves, seemed not to care about the frigid bite in the air. 

Steam poured up from underground vents in thick sheets, giving the whole place a ghostly quality. The twists and curls of it carried their gazes up from the pavement, and they had to crane their necks to see the tall structures that ascended towards the stars, all of them interlinked by an intricate web of brightly lit skyways that criss-crossed overhead. 

Advertisements projected against the flat sides of buildings, and the three couldn’t help but squeal each time they saw an Icejin concert promotion. Even after his departure, the ads still used old group photos with his likeness. Whis’s idea, Eighteen claimed. The man was a marketing genius, and simply using the old band photos nearly a year after his split was enough to keep the rumor pot brewing. 

While Bulma had seen pictures of them before online—back when Vegeta had just moved to West City and she and Chi-Chi had done their summer research—it was odd to see them up close, writ large against the buildings now. The whole band looked brutal with their faces painted white like skeletal ghosts with thick, black eyeliner. Bulma recognized Zarbon, and a chill ran up her spine as she recalled his silky voice. Creepiest of all was their frontman whose head was shaved, save for a greasy streak of purple hair that was slicked back down the center. His piercing eyes were covered by red contacts that made him look alien. How Vegeta managed to put up with a group like that for so long was a mystery. Even with the makeup, Vegeta didn’t look creepy like the others. He looked utterly miserable. She wondered if he’d ever tell her about his old life. As it was, he ignored their chatter on the topic and stared blankly over her shoulder out the window. 

***

Chi-Chi pulled her coat around her, freezing and impatient as she waited for Goku to retrieve their luggage from the trunk of the car, and Eighteen shouted instructions from the backseat.

“10am sharp. If you’re a second late, Vegeta, gods help me, I will–”

Vegeta slammed the car door in her face, cutting off her threat and fluttered his fingers in a juvenile wave as the limo pulled away.

The hotel occupied the top half of a skyscraper above a mall, and Chi-Chi’s ears popped as the elevator carried them fifty stories up just to reach the lobby. The front deskman that checked them in was so excited to have the Icejin baby staying at the establishment that he upgraded them to a suite near the top floor. Her ears popped once more as they were shot to the ninety-seventh story. 

It was huge and swanky. A large living room with panoramic windows separated two master bedrooms and ensuites. All four of them darted to the windows, pressing their bodies against the floor-to-ceiling panes as they looked out over the city in every possible direction. Lights from the adjacent buildings lit the air around them, broad as daylight. Not a star was visible beyond the city’s little globe.

“It’s making me sick,” Chi-Chi stepped away after a minute. She wasn’t the biggest fan of heights, she realized. One glance toward the streets below, and it felt as if her stomach dropped down to meet them. “We should get to bed. It’s almost three, and 10am will come faster than you think... Guys?” 

Of course, peeling Goku and Bulma from the window was like tearing kids out of a candy store, and Vegeta was after his own candy, raiding booze from the mini fridge.

“Chi-Chi why don’t you and I take that room?” Bulma said, pointing.

Vegeta immediately whipped around from the fridge and whined. “ _Why?_ I’m not sharing a bed with Kakarot!” 

“Well, it’s that or the couch, pal!” 

Chi-Chi and Goku traded awkward glances. Eighteen and Krillin weren’t the only ones who hooked up two days ago after the concert. Not having spoken to each other nor anyone else about their indiscretion, Chi-Chi had hoped that she and Goku would be defaulted to sharing a bed—forced to face the facts... or the sheets. 

Why Bulma suddenly chose this moment to be considerate of hers and Goku’s status, Chi-Chi couldn’t venture a guess—especially when it was obvious that Vegeta was being downright clingy toward her roommate, which was odd for him. Through the airport, the car ride, even checking in, he had a hand on her. Whether her shoulder, her hip, her own hand, he was like a lost little puppy trying to forge his own leash. He looked utterly panicked at her suggestion. 

His face twisted further with disgust when Goku chimed, “Come on, Vegeta. I’m a sound sleeper. We shared a room in Kame!”

Hearing Goku support Bulma’s plan, Chi-Chi was a bit disappointed too, but she buried the feeling and plastered a smile over her face. “Watch your blankets, Vegeta. He’s a hog.”

Vegeta just frowned at Goku and threw empty miniature bottles of vodka at his head before they all seperated for a few hours of sleep.

Once she and Bulma had gone through their nightly routines and tucked into bed, Chi-Chi resolved to tell her friend about the morning after the show.

“Chi-Chi! Why didn’t you tell me sooner! Tomorrow night,” Bulma promised, “We’re getting you two back together.”


	17. Hands to Myself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was over 8k words, so I've split it in two. If it seems like it ends kind of abruptly, that's why.
> 
> Thanks again for the beta read [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan)!

A wake-up call rang through every phone in their damned suited at 9am, and Vegeta wished there was an actual person on the other end to scream at. He glared at the blinking red light, trapped under Kakarot’s heavy limbs. It stopped when one of the girls finally answered from the other room, and he quickly fell back to sleep in the returning silence… until they both woke to the girls cackling like devils as they stood over them.

He’d managed to sleep soundly through the night, despite Kakarot’s snoring. That he was used to after the Kame Island experience. But in actually sharing a bed, Vegeta quickly learned the man wasn’t so much a blanket thief as he was a cuddler. The minute Kakarot fell asleep, Vegeta had to fend off his errant limbs that tried to wrap around him like some succubus. Of course, the girls would appear unsolicited to witness them twined together. He managed to slip out from under Kakarot’s arms and legs, flicking-off the girls as he padded to the ensuite bathroom to bust a line and take a shower.

“Do you _need_ me to come?” Bulma whined, begging for sympathy as she stood in the suite’s entry half dressed, her hair tangled like post-christmas tinsel. 

No doubt she’d rather pamper herself in the suite’s jacuzzi than sit through contract negotiations, but Vegeta wasn’t about to walk back into those offices alone. Anxiety numbed his hands and fingers, and without her there to curb it, he knew it would snowball into a full-fledged panic. But he didn’t want to answer her question, not out loud. Thankfully, a heavy scowl and press of his lips was enough to break her.

“Ugh! Fine, but I don’t know what use I’ll be!” she grumbled and stomped back to her room to change into a _Killswitch Engage_ tank top with art from their sophomore record and a shredded pair of black jeans that revealed more skin down her legs than they covered. 

They walked the skyways to the GOD’s headquarters, since anything within a mile radius was pointless to train or drive to, stopping for coffee at a cart along the way. That put them all in better spirits. Neither he, Bulma nor Kakarot were big fans of early starts, especially after just four hours of sleep. Chi-Chi was the only functional human among them, and always to an extreme. She shouted at them like some draconian chaperon herding naughty children on a fieldtrip.

The Gods of Destruction offices occupied the fiftieth floor of an old, art deco skyscraper. Its front doors were twenty feet from the mouth of the skyway. Just their luck, there was fucking press outside. Vegeta almost turned around at the sight of them, but Chi-Chi caught his wrist and dragged him behind her through the throng of cameras and flashing lights that blocked them from the GOD’s glass entry. The press swarmed on them like a horde of angry bees on honey, all buzzing with questions about the now infamous West City showcase.

“Don’t say anything, Vegeta. Just go!” she growled and pushed him forward into Kakarot’s back, urging them to move inside as quickly as possible. Chi-Chi turned back toward the cameras. No-nonsense and all powerful, her chin tipped up as she crossed her arms and promised they’d answer every kami-damned question in a formal press conference at a later date. 

“Sorry,” Eighteen droned, most unapologetically, cocking her hip alongside her brother in the middle of the long, black-marbled hall that served as a foyer. “They’ve been here all morning. Didn’t anticipate the press would follow us from the airport, but like Whis says, all press is good press.” She waved a flippant hand and spun around to lead their little parade through the corridor.

Nothing had changed since the last time he was here. His gold records were still the hallmark of the giant space. They hung along the walls next to huge promotional posters with his image in each of their forefronts. It was odd facing those posters now, almost haunting; he looked so much younger. He was only fifteen in the first one—his face still rounded with baby-fat, his hairline full with jagged bangs that hung over clear, bright eyes. But it wasn’t his age that irked him. It was the naïve cockiness expressed in his teenage face that was hard to look at. How stupid he was back then. The face of the kid in the poster thought he’d fucking made it—that finally, after everything he’d endured in his sorry life, he was about to reap his reward. How fucking stupid. Down the line, the Icejin posters grew more and more tragic. Every year the life in his eyes grew dimmer and duller, his expression more cynical. 

“Bulma, how would you like to avoid a very boring meeting and take a tour with me instead?” Seventeen extended a hand, waiting for her to take it. 

Bulma looked over at Vegeta, asking his permission or worried about leaving him. Either way, he wasn’t going to say no and appear needy. The hardest part was over; she’d gotten him through the doors. Chi-Chi, he hoped, could handle the rest. And with Seventeen, she’d be in good hands. Vegeta’s animosity didn’t lay with Seventeen, or Gods of Destruction for that matter. 

The lines could sometimes be confused. Vegeta played a pawn for the label before, but ultimately, Beerus and Whis had never been the direct culprits of his distress. They took advantage of him plenty, and they turned a blind eye to his mistreatment by Icejin for years until it came to a head. But when it did, they took Vegeta’s side and delivered their in-house lawyer, Whis’s sister Vados, to support him on loan—effectively standing up for him in a suit brought against him by their highest earning band. 

Still, it didn’t surprise Vegeta that Icejin stayed with GODs even after the label took his side. There wasn’t anyone bigger in terms of metal, and clearly, a deal was made behind closed doors once he was gone. The band barely missed a step. The press never caught wind of the true story. And judging from the giant ads splayed across every skyscraper, Icejin wasn’t hurting in the least. Of course, the label would spend the last seven months making it up to their gold record gods, giving them whatever they wanted. Like every other label, they were hemorrhaging money faster than kids were torrenting their product, and Whis couldn’t afford to lose them.

Vegeta guessed that the only reason GODs agreed to represent him was because they were likely aware of the abuse he endured under Icejin’s care that started back when he was a minor, so on top of him being a fan favorite, they were just saving their own asses. In case the details ever leaked, they wanted to appear on the right side of the issue.

Certainly, they weren’t aware of everything; Vegeta would take the worst of it to his grave. But in tight, industry circles, it was no secret that the band members were notoriously violent. They constantly fought, and Vegeta was often on the losing end, ganged up on by a twisted collection of rich punks ten years his senior. Everyone, from producers, photographers, video directors, and especially their roadies, like their last bus driver, had witnessed enough for Vados to effectively negotiate him a ticket out of hell for beating Frieza into a coma. GODs knew if he or any of those people talked, they’d be just as culpable as Icejin in the public’s eyes for letting it happen. Whis’s absurd belief that all press is good press had its limits.

Eighteen guided them into the big, corner conference room with large, arching windows that showed off the impressive skyline. The conference table was lined with donuts and pastries, coffee and tea, and of course a high-end bottle of Macallan. As Kakarot squealed over a donut, Vegeta immediately popped the lid off his half-drunk coffee and refilled it to the brim with the scotch. He deserved it. Two minutes in this place, and he was already sweating.

Eighteen plopped her folders and her own mug onto the table and looked between her three clients. With a dull commitment to her role, she delivered cold pleasantries. “Sleep well?” 

Chi-Chi snorted, “Those two did.”

A brow lifted over one of the frosty bitch’s eyes waiting for Chi-Chi to continue. 

Goddammit, couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? This wasn’t West City. She didn’t have to trade stupid anecdotes to get Eighteen to like her. Eighteen didn’t like anybody. 

Chi-Chi seemed unaware of the deadly stare Vegeta shot in her direction as her lips flapped on. “They shared a bed, and by share a bed, I mean they were cuddled up, hugging each other like a couple of kittens.”

“Aww!” Eighteen’s stony face actually broke a smile, albeit a sarcastic and mean one. She turned to Vegeta with a stiff laugh. “Did he at least give you the reach around?”

Heat flared in Vegeta’s cheeks with a surge of anger and embarrassment, and the idiot across the table just tilted his dumb, donut-stuffed dome. Vegeta was about to curse the bitches out when Whis interrupted. He and his sister Vados glided into the room. 

“What the hell did I walk in on?” Whis asked, almost absently as he dropped a stack of thick bound booklets at the head of the long conference table and made his way clockwise around the room to shake hands with Kakarot and Chi-Chi. He looked the same as before, tall and lean, with his white-bleached hair combed up and back in a fashionable faux-hawk. He wore a trim, burgundy suit, still playing the part of the young lawyer he once was. Vados was dressed with similar chique in a tight, green dress and knee-high patent leather boots, her own bleached hair pulled back in a high ponytail. Vegeta sometimes wondered if the label hired creepy twins on purpose, like some voodoo spell. Between Whis and Vados, Seventeen and Eighteen, it felt like all the same faces surrounded him at meetings backlit by bright windows, chanting in the same blasé tones as Vegeta was forced to stare at them against the city’s massive skyline.

Vados had him by the shoulders. “How are you?” she asked. Her lavender eyes looked down to him from where she hovered a full head above his.

“Peachy,” he said, avoiding her eyes. Instead he stared across the table to where Whis was doting over Kakarot, raining compliments on the smiley dope—his voice, his stage presence, his personality—telling the fool that he was about to be a star.

“And counseling?” Vados shook his attention. 

“Fucking blast,” Vegeta said, again without dragging his gaze back to hers. It was hard to look her in the eyes. She was always so… perfect, not a hair out of place. And he was, in her presence, a kami-damned mess. As his lawyer, she knew way too much about him, and that’s what bugged him most—that she knew his secrets and could scan him up and down with her almighty eyes and effortlessly know that he was high and lying. 

“You’re a terrible liar,” she said on cue.

Thankfully, Vegeta didn’t have to acknowledge her claim as Whis circled the table to clap a hand around his arm, spinning him from his sister’s grip to face him.

“Vegeta, you’re looking… a little worse for the wear.” Whis laughed, his trademark ho-ho chortle that made Vegeta want to punch him in the throat. His eyes raked over every scrape and bruise. “Kami, do you ever take a day off?”

“Can we just get this over with?”

“Over with? Oh, Vegeta, I think you’ll be changing your tune once you see what we have on the table.” Whis gestured to the pile of carefully bound documents as he pivoted around the end of the conference room to sit at its head. He shot each of the booklets with a flick of his wrist to every member of the parties, Vados and Eighteen included. 

Then he pulled a clear jewel case with a burned disk from the inner pocket of his suit and smacked it onto the wood.

“This is why we’re here,” he said, his finger tapping intently against the plastic case. “This record is the anthem for every misunderstood teen across the globe, and you, my dear boys, are their messiahs. The whole thing reeks of hormonal revenge.” 

He looked between the two. Kakarot’s brows were twisted as if the words were too big for his vapid brain, but it didn’t matter. It was all talk. Whis loved to talk. The same traits that made him a persuasive prosecutor once upon a time served him well as a record executive. Deep down, Whis was a luxury car salesman, a marketer extraordinaire.

“I never knew you were such a poet, Vegeta. Those lyrics are intelligent and tortured. They read like a diary. And don’t get me started on the delivery!” Whis looked at him with a cool smile. “I gotta say, I’ve listened to this record a hundred times, and your dueling vocals, your angsty sound, your recent _stunt_ let's call it—you just made yourself the poster boy for every dark little miscreant on Earth. MTV’s been calling us non-stop, begging for an exclusive. And you,” Whis turned to Kakarot, “Goku, nobody knows about you yet, but you’re the mainstream element. You’ve got that wholesome showman’s swagger. The good boy these teens’ mommies will let them sing to in the car. You’re the yin to his yang.” Whis laughed, “I can’t write this. It’s too perfect.” 

“This is the deal, what you have in front of you, and I can guarantee you won’t get anything better from any other label. But take the day, please, and look it over. Redline anything you wish to change. I do, however, need these documents signed by tomorrow morning if we’re going to work together. Think of Vegeta’s little stunt as the the first tremor in a series that brings the big quake. Once the alt crowd gives their blessing, I can guarantee this album is mainstream within a month, and you can kiss the lives you knew before goodbye.”

Vegeta ignored Whis’s overzealous claims. He’d heard them all before. Instead, he flipped through the thick bound papers of their contract.

“The lineup is all wrong,” he said, sliding the book to Chi-Chi’s view, his finger pressed against the offending page. “I’m not a vocalist, and Kakarot plays bass.”

Whis didn’t even look at his copy. Instead, he picked up the jewel case. “Whatever instrument Goku wants to play live doesn’t make a difference, but these are your voices, are they not?” He waged the disc between them. 

“Yeah, but that’s because-” Kakarot started, but Whis shut him down with a flick of the disc in his hand.

“This is your lineup. We all know your bother can’t play and sing at the same time.”

“Nor separately,” Vegeta added.

“Thank you Vegeta,” Whis chided. “Your two cents was duly noted at the showcase. So we’re good on that point? You two are our vocalists?”

“No!” Vegeta hadn’t realized that’s what he was agreeing to. He thought Whis was suggesting they swap Kakarot and Raditz for lead and back-up, not himself. “I’m not singing!”

Whis groaned. “Pray tell, why?”

“I’m not a singer!” he cried.

“So that’s _not_ you on the record?”

“It is, but–”

“But nothing. Your fans hear your voice in their car, and they expect to hear it onstage. What is there to talk about?”

“Come on, Vegeta,” Kakarot said. “You’ll get over the stage fright.”

“Stage fright!” Whis laughed. “Is that the line your playing? Please, Vegeta, I’ve seen you play in front of twenty thousand people without so much as blinking. What’s the difference?”

Fucking Kakarot. It was different, singing and playing instruments. He couldn’t pinpoint the reasons why, other than singing somehow felt personal. He felt exposed. Just thinking about it turned his stomach, and his palms began to sweat.

“Raditz will never agree to that.” 

Whis cleared his throat with an airy hum. “He already did. I spoke to him and Nappa yesterday; though, you may not like his terms.”

“Raditz has terms?” Vegeta scoffed.

“Just two. First… Royalties, regardless of who wrote and who recorded what, will be split between members equally. At least for the record cycles that are guaranteed in this contract. That’s _five_ records, Vegeta. You could show some gratitude.”

“Five! That’s amazing!” Kakarot interjected. “And splitting the royalties seems fair.”

“Not five. We just want two records,” Chi-Chi piped up at the end of the table. 

All heads whipped in her direction. Even Vegeta’s mouth fell to gape at her comment. Folding her hands over the booklet, Chi-Chi lifted her chin and looked pointedly between them. She explained, “You make five sound like it’s a benefit, but you’re really just holding them hostage. I assume this deal is exclusive, which means no side projects, and even if the band breaks up before five cycles, none of them can move on with their careers unless through you. Am I right?”

That scenario had never entered Vegeta’s mind, but she was right. A five record deal, while it sounded nice, would only handcuff them to the label. Bands came and went. If Saiyans as an outfit was still successful years from now, the second their contract was up, there would be new contracts from new labels wanting to sign the band, vying for their attention with more competitive deals than the one in front of them. 

Whis narrowed his eyes, side-eying his sister who proffered a tiny nod. “We can do this whole back-and-forth negotiation, but I have busy day, so let’s settle for three.”

“Fine,” Chi-Chi said. “But what about songwriting?” 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, does the exclusivity clause prohibit band members from selling songs they’ve written even if they’re not playing them?”

Kami, if she wasn’t Kakarot’s girlfriend, Vegeta would kiss her for making Whis squirm. The man traded another annoyed glance with his sister.

“I’ll allow it only if I get first option. If I turn a track down, feel free to sell it to whoever is buying. Will that suit you?”

Chi-Chi nodded once. 

“Good,” said Whis. “Now where were we?”

“Raditz,” Vegeta groaned. “His second demand.”

“Oh yes! Your signing bonuses, non-recoupable by the way, if you’ll flip to page three...”

“Ten thousand zeni!” Kakarot squealed at the same moment Vegeta noted, “Zero!?”

Whis’s stupid laughter rang through the room again. “Oh, you should see your faces. Priceless! Ah, yes... That, Vegeta, is your penance. We’ve agreed to divert your signing bonus to Raditz. With him as the original founder, and you being the latest recruit.” 

“Latest recruit? I wrote and recorded the goddamn songs, and I get nothing!?” He chucked the booklet at Whis. “Use it to wipe your ass. I’m not signing that.”

“Come on, Vegeta! You can have half of mine!”

“I don’t want half of yours, Kakarot. I want what I’m owed.”

“Technically, and my sister would concur, what you’re really owed is a cell in a state prison.” Whis tipped his head to Vados, who nodded her sober agreement. “I do hate wasting my breath to say it again. This is your penance. Take it.”

“Vegeta, you’ll make it up on tour,” Chi-Chi said, reaching for the booklet that Whis had flung back in her direction as he reached for a scone at the same time. 

“These are delectable!” he chimed, almost squealing as he bit into the thing. Kakarot beamed back, nabbing one for himself to stuff into his oversized maw. “Your manager is right, Vegeta. You have nothing to worry about. Relax for once. You’ll be rich before you know it. You’re good at what you do. The way you switch with ease from raspy, melodic vocals to all-out screams is almost as magnificent as this scone!”

Vegeta glared between all of their smiling faces, save for Eighteen who just picked at her manicure. He was getting fucked here, and they acted like it was par for the course. Unless by some miracle the band exploded the way Whis predicted, he’d be a slave to long boring roads, working three hundred days a year to make ends meet, stuck inside a rancid van with those fools. Every night would be spent batting off groupies and press hacks just to enjoy forty five minutes of mindless bliss on stage. But even that he’d be loathe to enjoy now that they were forcing him to sing. He turned to trap Chi-Chi in his stone cold glare. _Do something_ , he screamed with his eyes, but she only dropped her grin to glower at him.

“We’ll look over the rest of the terms this evening and get the documents back to you before we leave tomorrow,” she said to Whis. “What else do you need?”

“I like you. Sharp and straight to the point,” Whis said through a mouthful of dried pastry, waging his scone in her direction. “If you ever grow bored managing bands, call me.” He paused to swallow and sip his coffee before he answered her question. 

“I want this released in time for the holidays. CDs make great stocking-stuffers. That means, you get it mastered yesterday. This record needs to be in production now, ready for distro by the fifteenth. In the meantime, marketing. You’ll notice your marketing budget isn’t much, and that’s deliberate. The alt crowd doesn’t like to be told what to listen to. My method is to leak the first single anonymously on torrents. Your niche are computer savvy. They get the leak, and it spreads like wildfire. They and the mainstream crowd that wants to be them will buy the full record when it’s released a week later. That being said… What’s your single?”

“Track one,” Vegeta said at the exact moment Eighteen and Kakarot both chimed, “Track three.”

He couldn’t fucking win today. Whis just chortled and looked between them. “I agree with your comrades. Track three is fantastically catchy. What’s it called?”

“Cut From The Team,” Vegeta growled. The song was good, he knew, a mix of clean pop melodies overlapped in rich contrapuntal layers, with chugging metal progressions, and drums that never failed to keep pace. It was a sing-a-long, an anthem, made for screaming along to in the car and the mosh pit. But it was a kami-damned duet, and he’d be forced to meet Kakarot at center stage.

“I love it! You have a generous budget for a music video, but not a lot of time to produce it. Same goes for artwork.” He looked to Chi-Chi as she scribbled notes. “We also need a press kit: professional photos and bios. Vegeta, I need a real bio this time, not the synopsis to Forrest Gump.”

“How about Rocky? Just the first one though, the others suck.”

Whis didn’t even bother with an eye roll as he stood to leave. “You all have a lot of work cut out for you in the coming weeks. Don’t let me down.”

***

The others were finishing up in the glass conference room down the hall from Seventeen’s cubicle. Bulma waited inside the little space, folding the free t-shirts he’d stuffed into her arms when they raided the stockroom. Most of them were out-of-print classics from old tours with cities and dates scrolled down the backs. However, her favorite piece of contraband was a poster of Vegeta from his first music video—years before his sleeve of tattoos, ear gauges and lip ring. He was shirtless in just army pants and combat boots; a long, ragged red band was tied across his forehead and hung over his shoulder like some guerilla warrior, and black paint was lined across his pinchable cheeks. She should have felt like a pervert for fawning over his teenage image, but what the hell. The apple didn’t far too fall from the tree; it wasn’t any weirder than her mother hitting on him now, and it wasn’t like she was going to hang it on her bedroom wall… The living room would be far more appropriate.

“Who is _this_?” An airy voice floated down the hall, and Seventeen stood from his desk to greet the slender man that approached them. His smile was as polished as his voice, his trendy suit and his haircut. “A new artist?” 

“Nope, Vegeta’s girlfriend actually,” Seventeen said as the man extended his hand. 

“Wow!” His lavender eyes bugged in disbelief, and he darted his head around to Vegeta who appeared to be cornered in the conference room by a sleek, leggy blonde. Goku and Chi-Chi must have already escaped down the hall. Judging by the stormy look on Vegeta’s face, the meeting was a bust, and the rest of her day would be spent trying to reel in the madness. The man who held her hand redirected her attention as he shook it. “I’m Whis,” he said. “I run this fun house. Tell me…”

“Bulma,” she answered.

“Bulma,” her name sprung brightly from his lips—not creepy, like Zarbon, but not genuine either. The way his eyes sparkled as he looked her over felt like he was calculating her value, as if she was a precious stone in a jeweler’s window. The powerful woman in her was betrayed by girlish flattery as she blushed under his approving gaze. “Do you sing? You have the look of a pop star.” 

Bulma couldn’t stop the grin that spread across her lips. Kami, he was pretty and charming.

“She sounds like a dying rabbit,” Vegeta growled. He sidled up to her and yanked her wrist out of Whis’s grasp. 

Whis laughed, a giddy chuckle that rolled through the sea of cubicles, causing his employees to peep over their walls. “Well, perhaps she can star in a video.” 

Star in a video? That the man who ran the most profitable alternative record label thought she was gorgeous made her head spin and her knees almost buckle beneath her. Bulma’s grin widened like a cheshire cat.

“Not a chance.” Vegeta pulled her against his hip, his arm bound tightly around her waist. His face was so twisted with territorial jealousy, she’d be surprised if he didn’t pull out his dick to piss on her. “Time to go,” he said, ushering her quickly out of the cubicle before she had a chance to grab up her merchandise.

They met Goku and Chi-Chi in the long hallway before the horde of press that still stood outside the doors.

Vegeta turned back to Whis. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

Whis shrugged with indifference, not abandoning the calm smile that held his lips. “You’re a big boy, Vegeta. Keep your mouth shut and your hands to yourself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Let me know in the comments :)  
> *The description of their single is a frankenstien of some TBS TAYF reviews and some help from my hubs.
> 
> Come hang with me on [Tumblr](https://rockykelboa.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/rockykelboa) or [VBO Discord](https://discordapp.com/invite/MqvHgWg) or [TPTH Discord](https://discordapp.com/invite/6vbHx3k).
> 
> Just going to throw in a shameless promo for my other fic too, which was posted for the Vegebulocracy Big Bang. It's completed and lonely, lol: [Find it here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17002452/chapters/39970269)


	18. Slowly Fall Apart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, this is the second half of the previous chapter, but it was getting a tad long. I'm not totally comfortable writing Goku's POV, so I hope that comes off okay!
> 
> Thank you for beta reading [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) and [DianaeFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DianaeFox/pseuds/DianaeFox)!

It was dusk when she woke with the city’s lights beginning their slow crawl across the walls of their suite. Just as she’d expected, Vegeta’s mood had soured after the meeting, and he dragged her back to the hotel by the hand to cocoon himself under thick blankets and sleep through the afternoon. They argued over the fact, the moment he threw the thick comforter over his head, but Bulma gave in without much fight. Who was she to force him to escort her through the city on such little sleep in the aftermath of a meeting that stripped him bone dry of all the hard work he’d put into their debut record? Bulma read through the contract while he slept. It did seem a bit unfair, but she had to give Raditz credit for his breed of payback. At least it was better than continuing to beat the piss out of each other. 

She’d ordered room service, which he turned down with a dull, foreign curse. Once her own food coma set in, she napped alongside him for a few hours. He couldn’t sleep all night though, too. Bulma resolved to wake him up, hoping that maybe they’d catch some dinner and wander the skyways, or maybe the streets if she could bear the cold—anything to get out of the hotel room and see a little of the city. She didn’t ditch school just to watch him hide under the covers at some fancy hotel. 

She scooted up to his back, knowing the easiest way to wake him was through sex. She ran her lips along the edge of his ear as her fingers traced his lower abs above the waistband of his jeans. He sighed in his sleep and squirmed against her as she kissed the sensitive spot behind his ear and began to unbuckle his belt. Bulma gently turned him to his back and climbed on top of him. With a yank, she unthreaded the white studded belt from the front loops of his jeans, smiling overhead as his eyelids lifted. He was awake alright; she could feel him grow and harden between her legs. But his expression was a dull storm, clouded and dreary. His hands slid up her thighs to grip her hips, and she was about lean down for a victorious kiss when he used them to merely shove her off his frame. 

_What the hell?_ He’d discarded her onto the bed like a dirty garment, and it took every ounce of self-control to suppress the confusion and anger that was bubbling to the surface. 

“Where are you going?” 

Vegeta grumbled over his shoulder, “To take a piss.”

Fair enough, if he was anyone else, but she knew better. As soon as the bathroom door clicked shut, she hopped off the bed to press her ear against it. He pissed. That was true. But either he was the only man on Earth that washed his hands for a full minute afterward, or he was getting high. She couldn’t hear anything over the running faucet, and she knew Vegeta well enough now not to give him the benefit of doubt. But determining how to handle the situation, she struggled to decide. One thing was for sure, she couldn’t pretend it wasn’t happening. 

Bulma knocked. “I know what you’re doing in there, so you might as well open the door.”

The water stopped. She held her breath and waited until the door swung open.

For a fraction of a second he met her eyes. His pupils were small as pin holes, and he quickly tore them away as he brushed past her into the living room.

The emotional side of her was furious, one click away from blasting-off into an incensed rage. Was she so unbearable to be around that he couldn’t fuck her sober? If so, he was an insane person, a deranged fool incapable of recognizing the value of a girl that was, quite frankly, out of his league. She was Bulma fucking Briefs, and he was pathetic.

It was a stupid thought, her rational side knew. She shook her head to recover that part of her brain, the smart part that understood with clarity that his addiction had absolutely nothing to do with her. She stood in the doorway of his bedroom feeling shitty for hosting any selfish, angry thoughts at all, watching him slip his feet into his boots.

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” he said, his tone clipped and agitated.

“Wait!” Bulma hurried to slip on her own shoes as he ducked out the door.

She chased him down the hall as he boarded the first elevator that stopped on their floor, barely slipping inside after him before the doors closed. It was crowded with a group of elegantly dressed businessmen from the top floor lounge who ignored the two punks as they guffawed loudly over some penny stock scheme.

She was forced up against Vegeta’s chest in the crowded space until most of the men departed at the floors that lead to the skyways or streets. Vegeta didn’t move a muscle until the elevator dinged below ground at the subway level. Like a racehorse breaking the gate, he darted out of the elevator into the fluorescent lit tunnel with his hoodie pulled over his head. A blast of cold air nearly froze her to the spot when the doors opened, but Bulma forced her feet to move, ducking and weaving through the throng of commuters, trying not to lose him.

***

The girl followed at his heels, and Vegeta tried his best to evade her in the tunnels as he dodged through hurried traffic that pushed in every direction. 

He didn’t know where he was headed. The urgent need to escape her was a reflex. Bulma wanted to interrogate him, and he wasn’t in the mood. He’d never be in the mood to answer those questions. Why did he need to get high? That’s what she wanted to know, and fuck if she’d even listen to the answer. It worked, plain and simple. It wasn’t a problem but a solution, the only time he felt level, like he was treading water and not drowning. With one, sharp inhale, all the noise in his head smoothed to a low hum and the crushing anvil on his chest lifted enough to let him breathe. But she wouldn’t want to hear that answer. Like Nappa, she’d only tell him he was wrong, that he was ill. 

They were half right. Vegeta knew he was plagued, that much was true. But he wasn’t wrong. He’d tried the wholesome route. For six months, he tested their methods. No pills, not even a drop of alcohol passed his lips, but it was the most trying six months of his life, every minute spent in negotiation with his inner demons, trying to talk himself down from a cliff’s edge. 

The genius daughter of Capsule Corporation deserved more than a fuck up like him. He wished the smartass had the common sense to leave him, to let him disintegrate into a million little pieces, be dissolved into nothingness like stardust. He wasn’t worth chasing through frigid subway tunnels. He was a bastard and a junkie with nothing to his name but an immeasurable hole, an infinite crater that would only suck her down with him into its pitless bottom. Despite running from her now, he wasn’t so sure he could find the courage to not drag her down permanently.

The din of the underground station bustled in the distance, and Vegeta pulled out his old metro card to scan against the nearest panel, knowing she couldn’t follow him without buying her own. The train shrieked a stop at the platform just as he beeped his card through the turnstile, and he dashed toward it, spinning around to watch her shout in frustration when she realized she was caught on the other side. She couldn’t follow him, not without buying a pass, and he’d be gone by then—to lose himself in some shitty bar until the morning, hopefully not miss his flight, but he knew how these nights went.

The train’s doors were about to close, and he heard her frustrated curses as she stood on the other side of the gate, glancing around in desperation. But then, Bulma’s eyes met his with a determined glint, and before he could call her to stop, the crazy bitch jumped over the turnstile and raced toward him. 

_What the fuck?_ Vegeta quickly hopped out of the train before the doors beeped closed, back onto the platform to catch her in his arms.

“What the hell, moron! Are you trying to get arrested? You can’t jump the turnstile!”

The train whooshed behind them, blowing her hair as it picked up speed. Bulma crashed into him, her arms wound tightly around his neck as she scolded, “It’s your fault! You’re a fucking asshole!”

It wasn’t more than a few seconds before she was jerked away by a metro cop. The uniformed woman dragged Bulma off to the side of the subway platform, and Vegeta reluctantly followed. 

“Punk ass kids,” the woman mumbled as she wrote Bulma a ticket. 

“She’s a tourist,” Vegeta tried to intercede. She didn’t deserve a nick on her record. He was a fuck-up, not her. She was just stupid for chasing him.

“Tourist?” the woman scoffed. “Oh son, even an alien knows not to jump a turnstile.”

“Then she’s an alien. She’s an idiot.” 

The woman just huffed an unamused laugh and continued to jot down Bulma’s information. 

Through chattering teeth, Bulma delivered her name and address to the cop, hugging her arms around herself as the cold set in now that the chase was over. Granted it wasn’t nearly as cold in the subway as it was above ground, but she’d followed him from the hotel dressed in nothing but her tank top and shredded jeans. Remorse reared its head, and Vegeta pulled off his hoodie to wrap around her shoulders.

“Oh shit!” The cop exclaimed the moment his hooded sweatshirt left his head to reveal his hair. “You’re Vegeta from Icejin!”

“Can you fucking keep it down?” he asked, leaning in.

“Tell you what,” the cop smirked, “you write my son an autograph, and we can pretend this whole thing never happened.”

“Fucking done.” If that wasn’t the easiest North City compromise. Vegeta shook his head as he took the cop’s pen and scribbled whatever stupid heartfelt message she wanted on the back of a ticket before she tipped her hat and let them be. 

Without his hoodie, others on the train platform were quickly beginning to notice him, and Vegeta was in no position to be swarmed by a horde of zombie fans. He dragged Bulma back the way they came through the tunnels that led from the station to their hotel, his hand clasped around hers. But she was dead weight. Her feet dragged as he pulled her along behind him.

“What is the fucking hold up, woman?” 

He spun around to scold her, but saw that her blue eyes were welled up with tears, about to boil over. She started to cry—not just the stray tear, but loud, wailing sobs that twisted her pretty features. Kami, why? They’d stopped at a fork in the tunnels, and Vegeta pulled her off to the side, pressing her up against the wall to shield her from the people that passed by, ignoring those that stopped to gawk at them. 

He whispered low in her ear, “What do you want, Bulma? Kami, why are you crying? I saved your sorry ass from a ticket.” 

“It’s not the stupid ticket. It’s you!” she wailed. 

_Him?_ She was crying over him? He didn’t understand why. She wrapped her shivering arms around herself and dropped her face into the crook of his neck, muffling her sobs. 

“You’re making this so hard,” she said.

This was it, he knew. The slow march of destruction he’d been dreading since they hooked-up so many months ago was about to peak. The strong, smart little bitch he’d met in Raditz’s driveway was busting apart at the seams, and it was because of him. He’d tried to keep his distance, even after he moved in with her, a practiced nonchalance he had with girls—remaining physically close but emotionally distant. He’d managed to coexist with Eighteen for nearly three years that way. But Bulma was different. She butted her way into his life with an all-consuming force, and he couldn’t find the nerve to push her away. Jumping off that train just proved how attached he’d become.

As he hugged her, tried to quell her tears, he couldn’t help but think how hard it would be to find the will to leave for good. If this project came to nothing, or if it didn’t fill the gnawing emptiness that hollowed every corner of his soul, that left him sunk in the same old pit he’d never been able to surface, he wondered how he could possibly make his exit without destroying her too. Vegeta knew his time was running short. His patience in trying to stick the pieces of his life together into some composite of contentedness was nearing an end. Sometimes he wanted it to end, and the moments when those types of thoughts seemed easier than carrying on as he did, he wondered if he was too late to not horribly doom her too.

***

Goku’s feet were killing him by the time they found a place to eat, and his stomach growled in fierce approval as their food was set across their small table. Platters of soy garlic fried chicken, potstickers, fried rice and pork buns covered every inch of surface. There was hardly room for their drinks. He dug into the meal like it was his last, listening to Chi-Chi poke fun at his inability to use chopsticks as he wasted no time shoving potstickers into his mouth with his fingers.

The spread of food that laid before him would have been the perfect way to end the night if he could just shut down his nagging mind, turn it off like a faucet from the open-ended questions that plagued their current status. Despite that one, tiny piece, he loved every second of the day.

Being interviewed by the press that swarmed outside label’s office was surprisingly entertaining. After Vegeta and Bulma left ahead of them, most of the press remained to circle around him and Chi-Chi like buzzards over breakfast. Goku stared wide-eyed into the dozens of lenses and microphones all pointed at his face, which had grown hot as people shouted questions all at once.

“One at a time,” Chi-Chi barked, pointing at a reporter. She was a natural, turning the rowdy bunch into a classroom of well-behaved students. They spoke only when she directed, and refrained from asking about the showcase when she laid down the law on the subject. 

Once Chi-Chi got it through their heads that Vegeta’s temper was not the topic of conversation, the questions turned to Goku. Nervous at first, his tongue seemed stuck to the roof of his mouth, but after stuttering through the first few answers, he got the hang of being interviewed and actually found it exciting to explain the band’s goals and chat up the process of creating their debut record. The reporters wanted to know everything about him, and unlike Vegeta, he had nothing to hide. It went well, he thought, as he grinned at the cameras.

They were even left alone once Chi-Chi decided the impromptu conference was over. The rest of the day was spent together, traipsing through North City’s skyways, store by store, even venturing once to the street vendors below until they were too cold to move their fingers that were clasped around mugs of warm whiskey ciders.

It was like old times, like they had never broken up, the whole day spent laughing and planning their future. Not as a couple, granted, but a future nonetheless. Vegeta hired her, and Goku agreed she would make a damn good manager. It was the right decision, but it made his and Chi-Chi’s current status all the more convoluted, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the hand that she set on his thigh as she giggled in conversation. Gods, he had to come clean before he gave into the warm sensation that set his nerves beneath her palm on fire, that threatened to void all the good sense from his brain and give into her.

Goku lifted her hand from his thigh, clasping it in his own. 

“Chi-Chi, have you talked to him yet?”

Immediately, she knew what he was asking. The smile slipped from her lips as she frowned, pulling her hand away to poke at the ice in her cocktail with her straw. 

“I will,” she said. 

“When?”

“As soon as I figure out what I’m gonna do about school. I can’t just go to him and say, _hey dad, I was rejected from law school, and I’m thinking of quitting school altogether to start a management company for musical acts_ , Goku. He would freak out! You understand, right?”

“Since when are you quitting school for this?” Kami, if murder wasn’t a sin, Reverend Ox would have Goku’s head on a pike. Distracting his daughter from the straight and narrow path he’d set out for her wouldn’t win him any brownie points.

“Since today,” Chi-Chi shrugged. Setting down her drink, her hand found its place back on top of his leg, and she put her weight into it, leaning toward him with a sparkly look in her eyes. “I’m good at this! And, I don’t need an expensive degree to do it. I can make this work! Us too, Goku. I want _us_ to work.”

“Cheech, about that. I mean, you’re my manager now. What if something goes wrong, business wise? Or between us? I mean… I worry that this whole thing is getting too complicated, and what if-”

“Stop!” Chi-Chi cut him off, tearing her hand from his thigh to place her palm in the air between them. “Kami, Goku! Why are you being so negative? This isn’t you! You sound like Vegeta! Have some faith in us, will you?”

“Us.” He smiled at the thought. “You’re right. _Us_.” Goku nodded toward the ceiling, mulling the idea over. Chi-Chi, his manager and his girlfriend, and he, the forbidden fruit, according to her father. 

He brought his focus back to her, licking the sauce from his lips as he scratched the back of his head to come up with an acceptable compromise. He wanted nothing more on Kami’s green earth than to have Chi-Chi back, but he wasn’t the only man that loved her, and ultimately Reverend Ox had the last say. Goku would never let her sacrifice her relationship with father for his sake, whether he disagreed with the man’s intentions for his daughter’s future or not. 

“What are you thinking?”

“It’s just… I’ll never be comfortable with _us_ until you talk to him.”

Chi-Chi opened her mouth to whine.

“But,” Goku interceded. “I get it. You want to approach him with a solution not a problem. Until then, I’m willing to take it slow.”

Chi-Chi’s eyes widened before a smug little smile formed across her lips. “You mean, we’re officially dating again?”

“Did we ever really stop?”

“Yes! Goku, those weeks were horrible for me! I’d never been so miserable in my life. And you wouldn’t even talk to me.” 

“Shit, I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.” Why was he so inept at this relationship stuff? Making light of the fact that he’d hurt her wasn’t his intention. He was always putting his foot in his mouth, always shrinking back from her lip that curled into a snarl right before she’d pop-off into an angry rant. Thankfully, she didn’t seem mad now. 

“It’s fine. I forgive you.” Chi-Chi took a sip of her cocktail before a coy gaze stole her pretty features. “But if we’re dating again, does that mean we can… you know.”

Kami, she would be the death of him. An airy laugh left his throat at her insinuating look, and Goku tried to swallow it down and stay strong. 

“No,” he said. “I’ve gotta give you some kind of incentive, right?”

“Goku, are you kidding me!” Chi-Chi kicked his shin under the table. “Ugh, fine. Go cuddle your boyfriend again tonight, see if I care!” A smile was hidden beneath her attempt at a cold scowl.

“Ahh, yes. He’s quite the squeezable little bear,” Goku mused. “You jealous?”

He ventured a hand across the gap between them to cup her chin and pull her pouty lips in for a simple kiss. It wasn’t often he had the upper hand with Chi-Chi, and he was going to milk it while it lasted.

Despite arriving back to the hotel early, the room was dark and quiet. Chi-Chi and Bulma’s room seemed vacant, and just a glow from the TV swept under his own room’s door.

“I guess this is goodnight unless you change your mind,” Chi-Chi tipped her head at him with that seductive little grin planted on her lips. 

“Goodnight, Chi-Chi.” Goku smiled and shook his head as he slipped inside his room.

***

Vegeta heard Kakarot and Chi-Chi return home. He couldn’t sleep. Napping for six hours was probably not wise, and neither was getting high so late in the evening with nowhere to go and nothing to do but watch music videos on MTV. Most of them were shit. The station never played anything but crappy boy bands and the occasional hip-hop track this time of night. 

Bulma had passed out quickly after sex, that and all her earlier weeping. She was pressed tightly against him with her head resting on his chest, her arms coiled around him like she was afraid he would leave again. 

Kakarot stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him.

“Hi Vegeta,” he chimed, looking the two of them over. “Does she have clothes on under there?”

Was the idiot planning on staying? “Yes she has clothes on, but why-”

His question was answered when Kakarot leapt onto the bed like a kid at a slumber party. Making himself quite comfortable, he stretched his legs and propped his hands behind his head. “Oh, I just didn’t want it to be awkward. You know… if Bulma was naked. Did you guys have sex in here though?”

“How is this not awk-“ Vegeta stopped himself. It wasn’t worth it. “Yes, Kakarot. That is what adult couples do when they’re alone in a hotel suite.”

“Egh…” Kakarot sat up to look behind him, as if he’d accidentally sat on a pile of cum. 

“Don’t worry, idiot. I don’t pull out. And you’re welcome to leave by the way.”

“Oh, got it. Condoms.” Kakarot clicked his teeth as he pointed to his head to admire his own stupid brilliance. But Vegeta shook his head. “No condoms?”

“She’s on birth control.”

“Yeah, but… It’s Bulma. You really think she remembers to take them everyday?”

Vegeta looked down the woman in his arms, horror dawning on him. Shit, Kakarot was right, Bulma was not exactly organized. At best, her mode was a controlled chaos. Her birth control was probably in the glove box of her Audi or stuffed in a fucking shoe on her bedroom floor. Impregnating his girlfriend was as terrifying as a flopped record, a mistake he couldn’t erase that would follow him to his grave. Worse, probably. With his luck his offspring would inherit his fucked up head, and he’d spend the rest of his stupid life atoning for the existence of another miserable person.

“Oh shit! Look Vegeta! I’m on TV!” Kakarot nearly leapt from his skin, interrupting Vegeta’s thoughts as he threw himself at him, wrapping his big dumb arms around Vegeta’s neck and shaking him as he squealed.

“Goddammit, Kakarot! Keep your hands to yourself!”

Bulma grumbled to wake, caught in the web of limbs. She pressed herself upright and shushed them, her eyes glued to her friend’s face on the screen.

“Vegeta, we did it!” Kakarot beamed. “We’re gonna be famous!” 

Vegeta looked at the smiling dope’s face on the screen and found himself hoping he was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments :)  
> And come hang with me on [Tumblr](https://rockykelboa.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/rockykelboa) or [VBO Discord](https://discordapp.com/invite/MqvHgWg) or [TPTH Discord](https://discordapp.com/invite/6vbHx3k)


	19. Inconsistencies of My Mood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of good help this time from [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan), [DianaeFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DianaeFox/pseuds/DianaeFox), and [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres). I owe you lovely people!

The director was seething, his cheeks beet red as spit flung from between his chapped lips. “I don’t want my name anywhere near this project unless you get that choreographer back here to finish the job.”

“I know. I know.” Chi-Chi held up her hands. Kami, this shoot was turning from bad to worse. They’d been stuck in this warehouse for three days straight, and it was like pulling teeth to get the guys to focus. All four of them were children on set, and every hour they wasted was driving up the budget. Every kami-damned one of them had an opinion on every kami-damned shot, undermining the poor man at every turn. Couldn’t they just trust the expert? He’d filmed dozens of successful music videos, and the last thing he needed was a bunch of prima donnas telling him how to do his job. 

On top of that, they goofed around between takes. Vegeta was always off smoking, and Nappa on his phone; Raditz was hitting on extras, and Goku, well… as mouth-watering as he was hanging around shirtless on set, he was a pain in the ass. He drilled the fight choreographer over every move, trying to plot out his own fight scenes. Goku didn’t understand that his expertise in the arena came across as condescending to a professional stunt man. The dozens of new ideas he dropped on the poor sap after lunch were the last straw. The choreographer up and quit.

Thankfully, they’d gotten in Raditz versus Goku, and Vegeta versus Nappa’s fights already. Just Goku versus Vegeta was left. But it was the big number, and they had no plan.

“It’s fine, Chi-Chi.” Goku grinned. “We can just fight for real.”

The director’s eyes nearly popped from his skull. “Fight for real? Do you know how videos work, kid?” He pointed to his camera. “I have one of these. You fight for real, you get one shot. Continuity goes out the window.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Goku’s brows twisted innocently.

The director looked like he was ready to froth at the mouth. “Fuck it,” he screamed at the crew. “Let’s do it live!”

Goku clapped giddily. 

Of course, Vegeta was only too gleeful about the situation. He’d probably pay money to land real hits against his bandmate. Like Goku, he lamented the staged scenes and was just as culpable for driving their choreographer to throw up his hands and walk away.

They deserved each other, Chi-Chi thought as she gritted her teeth and listened to the two morons plot out their fight while the director stood nearby rubbing his temples. She was sure the man was just two heartbeats away from an aneurysm. 

Chi-Chi’s stomach cramped up again, threatening to upchuck the tiny sandwich she’d barely been able to swallow from the craft service table, and she sat down in the nearest chair to breathe and wipe the cold sweat that formed along her hairline. Shit, she was getting sick. The past two weeks had been relentless. Earlier were the photoshoots, which were just as frustrating. 

Trying to get Vegeta to wear make-up was like trying to get a kid to wear a suit to Sunday Mass. He kicked and screamed like a child. She didn’t understand. She’d seen Icejin promos, and in every single one, he wasn’t just made-up, he was in straight-up costume. Why he was being so stubborn about a little bit of powder was beyond her expertise. She could decipher a lot of Vegeta’s stupid mood swings, but some of them she was forced to chalk-up to Vegeta being difficult just for the sake of it. 

Regardless of the chaos, she didn’t regret diving in with both feet into this position. She was good at managing the band, and she was getting paid. Not only that, she had a business plan formed and had already submitted the paperwork to legitimize her LLC. There were promising buyers for Vegeta’s indie songs, the ones Whis wouldn’t be willing to buy himself. But even Whis wanted demos, and Goku worked his magic with Master Roshi to lend them his studio while he was away for the weekend. As a favor to his former protégé, he was letting them stay at the house and use his equipment free of charge.

This video shoot was one more adventure, and despite the drama, she was having more fun dealing with it than she’d ever had prepping for the LSAT.

The director rigged up his operator and shot his parting words to the two psychos before they beat the piss out of each other on camera. 

“Remember,” he said, “this needs to end in a draw.”

Chi-Chi wasn’t so certain they heard him. The boys stood feet apart, surrounded by a horde of extras that would be goading them on. 

“Camera rolling…”

Chi-Chi cringed.

“Action!”

Vegeta charged, leaping into the air to catch Goku at his level, but Goku ducked before his knuckles could graze him and swept his leg around to knock Vegeta to his back before his feet could touch the ground. Shit… Chi-Chi held her breath, waiting for Vegeta’s ugly curses, but they never came. He was on his back, a slight smile on his lips as he placed his palms behind his head and flipped himself upright like some break dancer. They were face to face again, and Vegeta ducked a roundhouse kick, landing a punch into Goku’s gut. Her boyfriend lost his wind, but he barely buckled, recovering in an instant to spin around his opponent’s back with an elbow to the side of his head. 

It was real and raw, and Chi-Chi prayed to Kami that the cameraman was capturing the action properly. A repeat performance seemed to be out of the cards the way the landed hits against each other. Cracking lips and busting brows, they’d be lucky if they could move tomorrow. The extras didn’t even have to act. Like everyone on set, they were shouting earnestly, pumping their fists into the air with every move. It was hard to tell who was winning. The boys’ impish smirks were the only indication that they were keeping things civil. 

Chi-Chi grinned watching them. Fuck, the morons were the real deal. The Fight Club treatment was Whis’s idea, and that the boys fought for real, with real hits and real blood, shit… Whis was going to wet himself when he saw the footage, she was certain. 

The whole ride back to the apartment was lit with the boys celebratory banter as they bickered over who would have really won had they finished the fight without direction. It’d be at least a week before they’d see a first cut of the video, and Chi-Chi was just as giddy with anticipation... 

Until all the blood in her body plummeted to the soles of her tired feet when Chi-Chi opened the front door to see her father sitting at a kitchen bar stool next to her roommate.

“Hiya guys!” Bulma smiled awkwardly through clenched teeth, her head peeping from behind her father's pained expression.

“Dad… Wha-what are you doing here?”

Her father was not the type for surprise visits, but then again, she wasn’t the type to avoid his phone calls. This was all uncharted territory. Why he had to show up unannounced today, of all the days, to see her standing in the entry with two bruised and bloodied band boys, shirtless, clad in tight, women’s jeans… shit.

Bulma cleared her throat, waving the boys over. “Guys, why don’t you come get cleaned up?” 

The two followed her roommate to the bathroom, leaving Chi-Chi alone to face her father. Goku offered a consoling smile before he disappeared around the corner.

“I was worried about you, Chi-Chi. You haven’t returned my calls.”

Her stomach cramped up again like she was going to barf, and while she’d rather stay standing, a show of confidence she needed for her imminent confession, she couldn’t. Chi-Chi sat down on the bar stool and wiped at the beads of sweat that formed under her bangs.

“Have you been avoiding me because of that boy?”

“Sort of. I guess, that’s part of it,” she answered. She wrung her hands in her lap, avoiding her father’s eyes. _Come, on Cheech,_ she told herself. _Rip off that bandaid. One quick motion_. Chi-Chi looked up into his disappointed face and inhaled. “I’m quitting school, dad, and there’s nothing you can say to change my mind.” 

“Quitting school? Like hell you are! Chi-Chi, that’s crazy! I forbid you to–” 

“Please, just hear me out before you get upset!” She cut him off, tried to quell her father’s outrage that was threatening to revert her back into the perfect, well-behaved child she’d been most her life. This time she wouldn’t cower and retreat. She held up a halting hand, watching her father blink with hesitation before he finally closed his lips. A grunt signaled her to continue. 

“I started my own business. A management company for musical acts. I filed the paperwork a few days ago to make it legitimate. I’m already making some money from Goku’s band, but that’s just the start. The top executive for the biggest alternative music label out there saw something in me, and he’s promised to refer me clients once I get up and running. 

“I know you imagined me to be some powerful attorney, and I went along with your dream because I didn’t know any better. Growing up in that town, there was always only one path. But here in the city, so many others have opened,. That’s why you agreed to let me come. I’m finally finding my own path, dad. I’ve figured out what I’m passionate about. I can do this.”

The anger in his expression softened the longer she talked. Her father ran a hand down his face as he sighed and looked away. “You’re just like your mother,” he mumbled in a tone that felt imminent, a moment that was long overdue. “She took out a second mortgage on the house for the restaurant after I told her she was crazy.”

Chi-Chi couldn’t help the sound that left her throat, some hybrid laugh and sob. He only ever spoke about her mother with beaming pride, and she knew his comment was meant with the same sentiment. She’d never known her mother, who passed the day after she was born. But the reverence and admiration he held for his wife in all her boundless ambition and willful zest for life told Chichi he was going to accept her decision, as reckless as it seemed on the surface. And it was all thanks to a woman she'd never met. She flicked her tearful eyes to the ceiling as if to thank her mother’s spirit for helping him understand. 

“You’re not mad?” she asked, to be sure.

“No, I’m not mad.” He sighed defeatedly. “Chi-Chi, I just want the best for you. But I also want you to be happy. If this music thing is what you want, I know you can make it work. Your ma made the restaurant work, and you’ve got the same good head on your shoulders. I just wish you’d confided in me and told me sooner.”

“I was afraid you’d be disappointed.”

“You’ve never disappointed me yet,” was his earnest reply, before he narrowed his eyes and a knowing smile turned the corners of his lips. “One of my parishioner’s kids said they saw you on that music TV station.”

“Yeah, we were kind of trapped in an interview,” Chi-Chi admitted.

“I wish I could have seen you on the TV.” 

A wave of welcome relief, catching something akin to pride in her father’s confession, brought a blush to her cheeks.

“Next time, I’ll let you know.”

Goku peeped his head around the corner, and her father turned to follow her gaze. “Hi. Am I interrupting?” he asked.

Bulma had cleaned him up as well as she could. His face was still a bit scuffed up, but the blood was gone. He was wearing an orange t-shirt with his high school’s turtle logo over the breast pocket and his name spelled out in blue letters across the back. Bulma had stolen it from him years ago and often wore it as a nightshirt. On his frame now, it was way too tight. Regardless, the bright color against his dark features looked good. 

“Not at all, son.” Her father motioned him to join them. “I don’t know about you kids, but I’m starving. What do you say we get some dinner?”

Just the right words to reach her man’s heart. Chi-Chi beamed between the two of them. Her father clapped a hand over Goku’s shoulder as they made their way out the door.

***

Vegeta took a pull of whiskey before he ground another pill into a fine powder against the top of his amp. At least he had these little magic beads to dampen his mind’s endless babble and sooth his nerves. He split the pile into two thick lines and took one of them straight to the dome with a hiss. Fuck, he’d be surprised if his nose didn’t start bleeding at this rate. He’d been going hard for the past week, quickly dwindling his stash the longer he spent trapped alone in the practice space.

Trying to split his focus between his fingers and lungs was harder than he thought. At least nobody was present to hear him. He had the room all to himself for the better part of the days, and most evenings too, while the rest of them worked at the stores. 

Every day since they returned from North City, Vegeta spent hours in the dark, windowless room, running the set until his voice grew hoarse, his fingers ached, and his rations dried up. At least he was improving. Muscle memory was taking hold over his head, and he could perform the ten song set with few mistakes. 

None of that, however, changed the fact that he’d have to do this very thing in front of thousands of fans. Just thinking about it sapped any sort of pride he felt about his progress, made his lungs clam up and his throat tighten. The second he was on stage, staring at the sea of faces, he’d be lucky if he didn’t pass out trying to cough up the first note.

 _You’ll be fine! It’s easy! Just don’t think about it._ Kakarot’s cute little pep talks were easier said than done. Vegeta wasn’t a singer! Sure, he learned to sing before he learned Saiygo, thanks to his mother. She had songs for everything—songs to put him to sleep, to wake him up, to tie his shoes. But he’d never done it in front of anyone but her, not until they recorded at Roshi’s. 

Every time he opened his mouth he felt exposed; not naked, but translucent, like everyone could see into his soul and pick him apart. It was uncomfortable facing that kind of scrutiny. He didn’t want people to look at him that way, like he was some emotional sap with a heavy heart. Ripping guitar, that was his thing. It was an easy, impersonal cock-match he always won. His mind shut the fuck up, his fingers floated over the strings, and a wall of noise blasted through the amps to meet the crowd’s raging cries head on. There was no other high like that one.

He re-tuned his guitar and triggered his pedals. The opening chords of their single sprang from his pick. It was by far the most vocal heavy track. Hardly a measure was left without Kakarot, himself or them both spurting out quick-tongued vocals. The lyrics were fast-paced and overlapping, barely room for a breath between words. Vegeta was about to open his mouth to belt his first words when the door opened, and his guitar screeched to a halt. 

“You…” Vegeta growled.

Raditz let out a cocky laugh. “What, no hug?” he said. He dropped his guitar case in the entry and shrugged off his black denim jacket, tossing it into a corner.

“What are you doing here?” It was clear he came to practice, but alone? That wasn’t Raditz’s style. Vegeta was certain some bimbo would step in at any moment with a bottle of booze in hand and a blunt pressed between her bloated lips. 

“Well, seeing as I spent the first two weeks of November in bed with a concussion, I figured I’d better get my chops back up.” 

Raditz knelt to flick open his case and pull out his guitar. He jerked the strap over his head and whipped the thing around to his back before he stood, facing Vegeta. It seemed Raditz was full of confidence today, no doubt due to his successful snipe of Vegeta’s royalties and his signing bonus. His haughty posture was downright gloating as he stared Vegeta down with a slight lift of his eyebrows. Then his gaze darted over to the line of oxy on his amp. Raditz grinned as he picked up the rolled bill and snorted it down, sighing dramatically as he tossed back his mane. 

“You gonna pay for that?” 

“Suppose I could. Twenty thousand zeni just dropped into my account, so what the hell.” Pulling out his wallet, Raditz flicked a tener at him like he was some stripper. 

Vegeta had too much pride to pick it up and instead tore his guitar strap over his head. Playtime was over. There was no way in hell he’d stick around with this bastard. It took every ounce of control and more to abstain from another fight. One more smug remark, and Vegeta was going to give him an encore of their last big performance. 

“Aww, you gonna leave now?” Raditz asked, his tone cold and mocking.

Vegeta flicked off the power on his amp’s head and kicked over his guitar case, roughly stuffing the thing inside. “For your sake, I think it’s best.” 

“Ah… right. There something you wanna say to me?” asked Raditz.

“Yeah, eat a dick.”

Raditz laughed and crossed his arms, as if it was exactly the response he expected. He nodded his head, still smiling darkly.

“Naw, man. It’s just…. It really blows my mind.” 

He paused like he was expecting Vegeta to ask him what inane thought was so hard for his puny brain to comprehend. Knowing Vegeta wasn’t about to entertain him, he went on.

“Kakarot, I get. He’s gullible, and he gets a hard-on for anyone that’s as obsessive about this shit at he is. But Bulma…”

Vegeta tensed. He didn’t want to hear her name from Raditz’s mouth, much less some harebrained analysis of their relationship. But he couldn’t help himself. He slowly set the case upright against the wall and slipped his arms through his hoodie. He turned to Raditz, one hand on the door knob, waiting. 

Raditz seemed to think better of it. He just shook his head and turned to plug in his instrument. Vegeta was halfway out the door when he finally opened his mouth. 

“Don’t fuck her over.”

“You her daddy?”

“I’m her _friend_ , Vegeta. Not that you’d know what that is.”

Vegeta only grunted and slammed the door behind him. 

***

Bulma watched the lines of code run up her screen as they scoured the last updated Saiyan census databases for anyone with the surname Ouji. It wasn’t hard to hack. The Tuffles hadn’t put any effort into protecting their predecessors’ information. Unfortunately, there were thousands of Oujis, and the system was too old to filter them out by age, gender, or locale. She’d have to check them one by one. 

Bulma cracked open a Red Bull and a bag of Doritos, ready to settle into a long afternoon of sifting through data when her phone buzzed.

 _You free?_ It was Krillin.

 _What’s up?_

_Eighteen is moving today and we could use a hand. Goku’s working. Vegeta’s not answering._

Ugh… Bulma groaned at her phone. Helping Eighteen move in was the last thing she needed to add to her plate. On top of searching for information on Vegeta’s family, semester finals were wearing her thin. She was about to respectfully decline his request, but Krillin’s next text wore her down.

_She wants to get to know you. And she has Vegeta’s stuff._

Eighteen wasn’t a bad person, as far as Bulma could tell. They’d just gotten off on the wrong foot. Krillin was right, maybe helping her move would set things right. A new start, so to speak.

_What’s the address?_

Her new apartment was on the outer cusp of the arts district, close to The Lookout, just a block or two from where the neighborhood began to gentrify. A lot of scenesters migrated to that area. It was both affordable and trendy among the punk crowd, with a lot of bars and venues within walking distance. The apartments were old, railroad-style spaces—each room connected in a line, one to the next—but they were charming nonetheless. Eighteen’s was in a former single family unit that’d been split into separate dwellings. A three story walk-up, and she was on the top floor. The ceilings were high, and the original crown molding circled overhead. 

Eighteen stood in the small kitchen, shoving boxes with her foot across the laminate tiles. 

“Hey,” she greeted with barely a glance. 

“Hey,” Bulma responded with an awkward shrug, crossing her arms. “Where can I be of use?”

“Vegeta’s shit is by the door,” was the woman’s dead reply. But then she seemed to change her mind. Tucking her hair behind an ear, Eighteen turned to meet Bulma’s eyes, her face relaxing as she toned down the bitchy vibes. 

“But if you want to help Krillin, the van’s out back. Just take a left at the bottom of the stairs.”

Bulma spent the next hour hauling boxes up three flights of stairs. Eighteen had a lot of shit. 

Once the van was unloaded, Krillin departed to drop it off, leaving the two women alone in the apartment. Eighteen began to tear open her boxes as Bulma sifted through Vegeta’s things. A large keyboard was neatly packed inside its case and sat against the wall with its folded stand. Other than that, there were just two boxes. Both were filled with a CDs, gameboy cartridges and clothes—mostly band tees and flannel button-ups, girl jeans, and dirty pairs of sneakers and boots at the bottom. The materials still smelled like him, even after residing in Eighteen’s apartment for gods knew how many years. Bulma sifted through them, pulling out each tee to see what he was into. Mostly metal, but a few were post-hardcore, punk, or even indie. _The Postal Service_? Adorable. Bulma grinned as she whipped the tee to look at it before she pulled it on.

“Quite the collection,” Bulma mused, trying to force small talk with the stone cold robot on the opposite side of the room. 

Eighteen didn’t acknowledged her with more than a sideways glance. So much for getting to know the girl.

Bulma delved further into the box until her fingers hit something hard: a book. She pulled it out and turned it over in her hands. It was written in Saiygo, and as she fanned the pages, she realized from the line structure that it was poetry. Gods, she really didn’t know him at all. An old, tattered book of what appeared to be Saiygo poems with a North City Library stamp on its inner cover had been tucked away like a cherished prize. She opened to the page that was bookmarked with a piece of cloth, and it didn’t take long to realize what that tattered bit of material actually was. A long ribbon, maybe two inches wide and a foot long, was stained in what was clearly blood. The creases in the material bunched in places where it’d been tied. It was his wristband, the one he told her about to hide his tattoo; it had to be. She traced her fingers over the rust colored stains. 

Bulma folded the material carefully and placed it back inside the pages before she flipped to the other bookmark: a piece of yellowed paper that was also stained with blood-like smudges. She could make out tiny, smeared fingerprints along the edges as she carefully unfolded it. It was a venue flyer for a concert. She couldn’t read any of the words, but it was clear that the paper was an advertisement. There was a beautifully rendered drawing of a woman at a piano and big bold letters of what she guessed were the venue’s name. Below that was the name _Ana Ouji_. 

_Holy shit!_ This was a flyer for one of his mother’s shows! July 23, 1985 was printed toward the bottom along with a contact, likely a promoter or venue owner, and address. 

A lead! She had a fucking lead! 

It was hard to keep the discovery from him when she returned to her parents house with his other belongings. 

Since they returned from North City, he preferred to stay at her parents’ estate rather than her city apartment. While it was a longer commute to class, Bulma didn’t mind, so long as he was more comfortable. At first, she thought it had something to do with Goku and Chi-Chi’s reunion, since the two were loud and made their fancy city condo feel like a matchbox. But watching the way he interacted with her parents, Bulma was beginning to suspect they were the real reason. 

Her father treated Vegeta like anyone else, an interested party to his crazy endeavors, and Vegeta seemed genuinely interested in her father’s projects. He paced around the spaceship models in endless circles with his brows pinched together, as if he didn’t believe they could leave the planet and were just there for decoration. And he’d spend long evenings in the labs, not speaking, just handing her father tools as he listened to his futurist babble.

But more than Dr. Briefs, Vegeta liked her mother. Even if he pretended he didn’t, Bulma could tell. Her mother was needlessly handsy. And every time she wrapped her arms around him or kissed his cheek or even fucking smiled at him, he couldn’t hide the way his entire being melted. He craved her mother’s affection like a starving child. Quiet and polite in her presence, Vegeta sat in the kitchen while she was cooking, content to just exist in Panchy’s space as she chattered about nothing important, and he petted the cat that had also taken a strange liking to him—as if the animal could sense he was a stray too. 

While she appreciated his best behavior in her home, she wasn’t stupid. Whenever he left to practice at the space, he’d return with glassy eyes and a bad temper. His mood kicked up like dust, dirty and mean. He was losing his voice from over indulging and over-practicing, growing anxious as the days drew closer to the band’s CD release show. Vegeta’s method for dealing with such things, beyond the drugs he snorted, was to ignore them in the most dramatic way possible. Sleeping, or at least pretending to—burying himself like a rabbit in winter beneath layers of blankets.

When she returned from Eighteen’s new apartment, he was in bed this way, but only half asleep with the cat under the covers with him, purring obnoxiously as Vegeta rubbed his fingers against its cheeks.

He barely acknowledged her when she lifted the corner of the comforter to check on him, much less the return of his keyboard and boxes of wardrobe. She even showed him the book, trying to gauge his response, but she got none. He was stoned, coming down—she could tell that now. He only turned away to feign sleep. 

“Why thank you Bulma for bringing my stuff back from the ice-bitch,” Bulma mocked in a deep voice. “You’re welcome, Vegeta. It was no trouble. I only ran up and down the stairs all day carrying your ex-girlfriend’s _heavy shit_!”

Vegeta pretended not to hear her. He didn’t even bother with whatever stupid Saiyan nonsense he usually spat when he was tired and grouchy.

Her jaw clenched, and the book hit the wall with a thwack, causing the cat to dart out the door in a black blur. Bulma had chucked it across the room with twice the force than she’d intended, leaving a long red streak from the dye of its thick binding. Still, not a thread bristled from the pile of blankets beside her. 

Any sane person would have given up, thrown the guy out on the street. Hell, they’d only been dating for a few months, she shouldn’t be so attached.

Sometimes she was so frustrated by his behavior yet so irresistibly drawn to him that she found herself fluctuating rapidly between the thoughts, running some internal impulse test on her own sanity.

She was stuck to him, and her genius brain couldn’t learn why. Maybe the feeling was physical or biological, like a pheromone—as if she suffered some unwitting addiction to his every pore. Or maybe it was her obsessive-compulsive need to solve problems, since in twenty-one years, she’d never left one broken. Maybe guilt, now that she was in so deep—she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she dumped him, especially considering his reaction. He didn’t seem suicidal, at least not intentionally, but his commitment to self-destruction was deadly.

Likely, a combination of all those things was the recipe for her senseless attachment. But there was more to it than that, some secret ingredient. A god particle—like some undiscovered mass that should have crushed them both was instead the thing that bound them in perfect orbit. Whatever the feeling was, however scared or angry it made her, it meant she couldn’t leave him now if she tried. Without willing herself, she burrowed under the blankets too, stuffing her nose into the nape of his neck as she settled to sleep beside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading :)  
> Please feed me. 
> 
> jk jk.. (･ω<)☆


	20. Something That You Don't Know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the haaaalp [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) and [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres).

The air off the ocean was spiked with a nasty December chill, trapping them inside Roshi's musty, little beach house. It was the last place Bulma wanted to be in that weather, but her clingy boyfriend hadn’t given her much of a choice. He doled out ultimatums that if she didn’t come, he wouldn’t either. Stupid really. This was all _for_ him, and they had zero time to spend together. 

For the past a day and a half, the other four had stuffed themselves into the small basement studio tracking demos while Bulma studied for finals near the fireplace in the living room, trying to ignore the repetitive, dull thud of drums from the floor below—growing anxious when she’d hear them stop and the stairs creak with heavy steps. 

She’d been trying to catch Nappa alone. That was one perk to tagging along. And when he emerged into the hallway without one of the others at his heels, Bulma made the big man yelp as she leapt from the couch to corner him. 

“Can I get your help with something?” she asked.

Nappa groaned and backed into the kitchen. “For a price, Briefs. Depends what ya want.”

“I need you to help me get some information from somebody. I’m pretty sure they only speak Saiygo. Can you call this number and talk to them?” Bulma unfolded a piece of paper from her pocket and slid it across the countertop.

“What’s this for?” 

“Just follow my notes.” 

Nappa bent to rest his elbows on the counter, rubbing his face with one hand as he snapped up the rumpled sheet with the other to look it over. A brow lifted skeptically as his eyes scanned back and forth across the page, and the loud huff of air from his nose when he met the bottom made her stiffen. If Nappa wouldn’t do it, it seemed even more unlikely that Raditz would—the only other person she knew that spoke the language, not counting Vegeta.

“What’s this all about, Briefs?” he asked.

“I’m trying to find his mother.”

“Yeah, I see that. But she’s dead, you know.” He tossed the bit of paper back onto the counter.

“Not for certain! The odds aren’t good, but if he could know for sure, one way or the other, don’t you think it would help him?”

“No… I think it would piss him off knowing you’re entertaining the idea at all. Leave it alone.” His tone was stern, like a scolding parent. But Bulma had never been one take to parental remonstrations, never having had any experience with them.

Maybe Nappa was right; he’d known Vegeta longer than anyone. And every warning he’d given her against him, as cryptic as they were, had turned out to be true. Vegeta was a grenade, pin pulled ready to detonate. It wouldn’t stop her… clearly. She was crazy enough to jump on him. 

“I can’t! Nappa, you don’t know the things he told me. Please, just talk to the man. Vegeta doesn’t know anything, and we can keep it that way if we have to.” She gave him a good old fashioned eye-bat with her baby blues, her pouty lips turning up as she watched him crumble.

“Alright, fine, Briefs. You win. But as far as Kid knows, I had nothing to do with this.”

Bulma yipped and clapped. She watched Nappa input the number and put his cell phone to his ear, biting her bottom lip as she listened to the faint ring.

 _The line picked up!_ Nappa began to speak in Saiygo to the person on the other end while Bulma stood at the edge of the kitchen to guard the basement door. Thank Kami she did. The door swung open, and Vegeta stepped into the hallway with a cigarette pinched between his teeth and his thick brows bent in perpetual irritation. Bulma ran to him, hoping to distract him from catching Nappa’s words. Nappa saw him too. Lowering his voice, he stepped out onto the back porch. 

Bulma ushered Vegeta along, out the front door into the cool air, keeping pace as he strode down the drive toward the road. 

“Where are you headed?” 

“Store,” he mumbled. He stopped to cup a hand around the end of his cigarette, fighting his lighter. “Need something?”

She was about to say no when the front door opened and snapped behind her. 

“Wait, I’m coming!” Chi-Chi chimed. Her roommate skipped up to meet them, pulling a wool peacoat over her cardigan.

“Just tell me what you want and give me money,” Vegeta said. “I don’t need company.”

Chi-Chi just rolled her eyes and headed toward the road ahead of him.

Perfect, one less person to dodge. Bulma darted back into the house just as Nappa returned to the kitchen. He clapped his phone shut and ran a hand over his bald head. The somber, wearied look on his face meant there wasn’t good news. 

“What did he say?”

“Ugh…” Nappa groaned and shook his head like he was trying to shake off a bad vibe. “Nothing good, Briefs.”

“She’s dead?”

“Didn’t know anything about mommy, unfortunately. But damn… Fuck.” 

“What?” What could be worse news than the confirmation of his mother’s demise?

“He said he found her son in his theater after an air raid, and the kid was curled up like an oyster in her dressing room, bleeding all over the carpet. He and his wife pulled bits of shrapnel from his left arm and torso, bandaged him up. They took him to the border the next day, catching wind of a camp a few miles into Acrosia. I knew something fucked him up. He had those scars when I met him, but I didn’t know Kid was in the middle of a bombing. No wonder…” 

“Yeah, I knew most of that already. He remembers a lot of it.” Bulma said. 

“Wait… He told you that?” Nappa’s eyes bugged. “Damn Briefs, marry him! I’m begging you. You’re a goddamned sorceress.”

Bulma grinned with a saucy little toss of her hair. That Nappa was impressed meant she must be making some progress. But her smile faded as she realized she’d met another dead end. “Shit… So he doesn’t know what happened to her?”

“He gave me a name, some neighbor that might know more.” Nappa slid a bit of paper toward her where he’d written it down. Another lead! She squealed, nabbing up the paper as she dashed down the hall to her computer. Even if it took all day and night, she’d scan the hacked databases and every phone book across the globe until she found the woman.

***

Launch was late, which meant Vegeta had to play dumb and follow Chi-Chi through the grocery store like a child, strolling off into random aisles in search of whatever she demanded him to hunt down. _The fuck was filo dough?_ His search was half-assed, and he skipped over most of the ingredients, lulling aimlessly about the store until he spotted her at the checkout. Arms full of whatever he’d managed to find, he was about to drop them in the basket when he spotted a pregnancy test buried beneath a box of linguine. 

_Holy shit!_ Vegeta’s eyes grew wide, and Chi-Chi nervously cleared her throat, meeting them for a fraction of a second before she pretended to chat up the clerk. _Fucking Kakarot!_ It was hard to swallow the fit of laughter that was crawling up his throat. 

Kakarot, king of the condoms, the man who dared to deliver his cute little PSA on safe-sex, had knocked up a girl. Oh the sweet, sweet irony. Vegeta was never going to let him live it down. The pale pallor and cold sweat that lined Chi-Chi’s brow as she dashed off to the bathroom three times that morning should have been enough to clue him in, but hell, he’d done the same thing often enough when he’d run out of painkillers after a long binge.

A rumble rattled the glass doors, and Vegeta turned his attention to where the crazy blonde had parked her dirt bike in the lot. Good timing, Chi-Chi would be only too happy to have him leave.

“You’re late,” he said, as Launch pulled off her helmet to beam at him.

“Island time, shortie. I’m early,” she winked. “And I brought an even hundred. Big ones too, 80 milligrams a pop.”

Launch dug into her leather jacket to extract a baggie of greenish tablets. She shook it out in the open with a dumb grin stretched across her face. 

“Fuck!” Vegeta nabbed them from her hand. “Be a little more discreet, will you?”

Stuffing the bag into his pocket with one hand, he pulled out a roll of cash with the other, hiding it in his fist as he pretended to look over the bike and discretely dropped the wad into her upturned helmet.

Launch leaned over his shoulder. Her lips ghosted the shell of his ear as she whispered, “Your girlfriend is looking for you.”

Vegeta spun to stand. Chi-Chi was striding over with a glare that was equal parts anger and angst. It seemed they both had something to hide.

Chi-Chi brushed by Launch’s greeting, grabbing Vegeta by the elbow as she dragged him toward the road.

“Are you sleeping with your pill peddler?” she growled the second they were out of Launch’s earshot.

“Hell no. What the fuck gave you that idea?”

“It’s obvious. If you aren’t boning her already, she’s clearly begging for it.”

“Well I’m not!” He couldn’t deny Chi-Chi’s observation. It was no secret that Launch wanted to fuck him, but she’d fuck anybody. Even Raditz wasn’t beneath her.

“What if she said she wouldn’t sell you anything unless you did?”

“I’d wear a fucking rubber and not knock her up,” Vegeta said, trying to turn the subject. “Does Kakarot know you’re pregnant?”

“No. I’m not even sure, hence the test.” Chi-Chi tugged on his arm to stop them in the middle of the road, pinning him to the gravel with her big, watery eyes. “What would you do if you got a girl pregnant?”

“No comment. That’s a loaded question.”

Chi-Chi’s lip quivered. The little hand on his elbow and teary eyes evaporated whatever fun he was having at Kakarot’s expense. 

“Just when I thought I’d figured everything out, another wrench is turned in the wrong direction. Vegeta, what do I do?”

 _Egh…_ He was the last person the girl should be confiding in. Why couldn’t she talk to Bulma? Before he could deflect or form a proper answer, Chi-Chi dropped her grocery bag to the ground and wrapped her arms around him with a broken sob, her face tucked under his chin as she wailed. The coconutty smell of her hair wafted into his head to sap what remained of his cold, hard resolve. Kami, if Vegeta had a dime for every time he’d been forced to comfort Chi-Chi on Kakarot’s behalf, he wouldn’t need a signing bonus. The dope owed him. He sighed and hugged an arm around her shoulders.

“Ignore what I said. I’m not half the man Kakarot is. He’s not gonna run away.” 

Chi-Chi pulled back, blinking at him before her head slumped again, nodding at the dirt road. She wiped her sleeve against her face and picked up the groceries. An air of awkward silence followed them back to the house, each consumed by their own dilemmas. When they turned down the dirt driveway, Chi-Chi bumped against his arm with a mumbled _thanks_ , and Vegeta knew she wouldn’t say anything about his errand if he said nothing of hers.

Nappa was packing his luggage into the trunk of a cab as they walked up the drive. 

“I’m taking off, Kid” he said. 

Vegeta lit another cigarette with barely a shrug goodbye, expecting Nappa to squeeze himself into the backseat and be off. But the man hesitated. Hands in his pockets, he kicked at the gravel with the tip of his shoe. When Nappa pulled his focus to look him in the eyes, Vegeta knew something was up. It was the same guilty face Nappa gave him more than ten years ago when he left him in North City for his first touring gig and promised he’d be back. 

A big hand landed on his neck, and Nappa shook him lightly. “Take care of yourself, will ya?”

Vegeta nodded, one eye squinted suspiciously at his former caretaker who continued to ride him with that sappy stare. 

_Fuck off already_. 

Nappa always wavered between moods, depending on who was listening. Toward Vegeta, he only offered a tired, angry ambivalence, especially after his arrest. But that didn’t stop him from seeking out every pat on the back he could get from anyone who’d listen to his sob story. 

_Good ‘ol Nappa saved a runaway teen from homelessness. Fucking Nappa saved a wallowing drug addict from self-destruction._

Doubts about Vegeta’s stint in sobriety weren’t even well hidden, as if Nappa was waiting for him to fail. He never wanted to be responsible for Vegeta’s life, and largely wasn’t, but still demanded his respect and punished him for his failures. He pretended to know him, and after fifteen years he should have if he was paying attention, but Nappa was a dumb, self-interested ape who ignored what was happening in front of his face, and instead chalked up every failure to Vegeta being childish and dramatic. 

“Hmmph,” Nappa nodded back, unconvinced as ever. He turned to climb defeatedly into the cab, off again to attend to his own ambitions—to patiently wait for Vegeta to fuck up for the hundredth time, just so he could say _I told you so_ , and bury him under the weight of his disappointment.

***

Chi-Chi stared at the little smiley face that mocked her on the sick. 

“What the fuck are you so happy about?” she cried. 

Her forehead dropped to her palm where she sat on the toilet in the little basement half bath, listening to the melancholy tunes that seeped under the door. She’d locked herself in there for what felt like an eternity trying to work up the courage to stand, to drag her feet back into the control room and crash land a meteor into Goku’s already complex world. He’d do the right thing, that’s what Vegeta told her in so many words. But even if he did, it wouldn’t make the situation any easier. She was barely twenty, trying her damndest to get her business off the ground, they both were, and now... fuck.

It was now or never. Gripping the fateful stick in her fist, Chi-Chi stood and opened the door. He was sitting at the console’s computer, nodding his head as he played and replayed the parts, comping together the best takes. 

Her feet felt like they were wading through wet cement as she approached him, reluctant to dampen his mood. He seemed so confident at the station, his fingers clicking through hotkeys as the tracks on the screen took shape. 

With a shaking hand, Chi-Chi set the pregnancy test on the console and inhaled. Goku’s fingers froze over the keyboard. Long seconds passed as he stared at the device before his head darted over his shoulder to meet her reddened eyes. 

“What is it?” he asked. 

The fact that he didn’t even seem to know what a pregnancy test looked like brought her to burst to tears. They poured down her cheeks in warm torrents. “What the hell do you think it is?”

“You’re pregnant?” he asked, his voice quaking.

Chi-Chi nodded, her cries catching in her throat like a bad case of hiccups. It was hard to breathe. She wanted to run from him. Seeing him frozen to the chair, wide-eyed with that dumbfounded look on his face felt like torture. Goku didn’t want a kid! Of course he didn’t! 

“But we were so careful,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re an idiot, Goku! You can’t think of one time?”

His eyes grew wider, if that was possible, as he muttered, “After the concert.”

It lined up. Just six weeks ago, and it was the only time they didn’t use protection. Lost in the stress of a sleepless night, they took comfort in each other without fully thinking through the consequences. It wasn’t his fault any more than her own, she knew. She’d let him do it.

“I’m so sorry,” was all he said. 

The guilty look on his face, like a naughty puppy caught in the act, only made her cry harder. A burst of rage filled her chest and a loud sob broke the air. He was too immature, the reality too real. Chi-Chi’s newly formed world crumbled around her as she turned to dart from the room. But she was stopped short as a palm jerked her back by the wrist. Goku was standing in front of her. He dropped her hand to wrap his big arms around her head, cradling her face into his chest. A warm huff of air from his nose ruffled her hair, and he kissed the very top of her head. 

“It’s going to be okay. Don’t cry.”

As much as she was comforted by Goku’s change of heart, it wasn’t okay. They had no money; they barely had her father’s support, and they were barely a couple. Being pregnant at nineteen was like one of those nasty programs they used to show in sex-ed class. Girl gets knocked up too young, and life goes out the window. She'd basically be a teenage mother. How was she going to launch her business now? 

A soft hand brushed over her cheek, tucking her hair behind her ear as his fingers wound under her chin to tip it up to him. 

“Please stop crying,” he begged, looking as if he was about to bust a tear himself. Goku shook her chin lightly in his fingers, willing her to meet his eyes. He didn’t blink as his soft grip held her in his gaze. “I love you, Chi-Chi. Okay? You’re my family, and I want a whole bunch of kids with you. This one’s just a little early, that’s all. We’ll make it work.” 

As strong as she’d always believed herself to be, his optimism, or maybe naivety, made him stronger. A wall of horribly soggy sobs lifted from her chest, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. But either way, Goku still did his best to sooth her upturned feelings under the weight of his arms.

***

Bulma yelped when the woman’s last known address landed on her screen. Vegeta’s former neighbor, Fasha Tomma, was easier to track down than she anticipated. According to the Tuffles’ records, Fasha resided there for eight more years after the war ended, before she immigrated here. And, as luck would have it, public address listings showed she lived less than two hundred miles north of West City, a half hour from Mount Paozu. 

Bulma was so giddy with her discovery, she didn’t hear him come up the stairs, only his raspy voice that called her name from the opposite end of the hall. A cigarette was tucked behind his ear, and one hand was wrapped around the neck of a bottle. Vegeta nodded his head toward the beachside door.

The sun had set hours ago, and the air outside was frigid and damp. Vegeta sat on the deck of the porch, legs dangling over the edge as he lit the cigarette. He inhaled and watched the massive waves crash against the shore. 

Maybe the weekend getaway was good for him, especially compared to the days leading up to the trip that set her teeth on edge. He’d run out of pills, clearly, and spent the last three days tying knots in the comforter as he rolled around in bed, cursing and moaning. _Just a cold_ , he claimed, guzzling three times the recommended dose of NyQuil syrup every few hours to ease the symptoms and help him sleep. Of course it didn’t work. He’d almost cancelled the session, but at the last second for whatever reason, changed his mind. And despite seeming sick and irritable earlier that morning, he was in good spirits now. 

As she made her way across the deck, she found him chuckling to himself about something. Bulma sat down at his side, extending her fingers toward his cigarette. He passed it, and his arms wrapped around her waist to scoot her closer. His fingertips that brushed the skin above her hip were cold, causing her to squirm up against him, feeling the vibration in his chest when he laughed again.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing… Kakarot… He’s an idiot.” 

“What did he do?”

Vegeta pulled his gaze from the water to look at her, a cocky, all-knowing grin buttered across his face. “Can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”

“I don’t believe you.” What secret would her long time best friend tell Vegeta that he wouldn’t tell her first? He was bluffing.

“What, are you jealous? I know something _you_ don’t know.” 

If he looked any more smug, she’d barf on him. But Vegeta was kismet, always one step ahead of her like fate. Whether by practice or instinct, it was hard to tell. His chin dropped to her shoulder, staring up at her with sharp, dark eyes that instantly vaporized every thought in her head and replaced it with a crushing need that toed at aggression—wanting to strangle him but straddle his hips and stick her tongue down his throat at the same time. He held out his fingers for the cigarette.

“Good progress?” she asked. She cleared her throat and turned away, trying to break his spell with a change of subject. “What do you have left to do?”

“Finish guitars, then piano, percussion, vocals.” He tipped his chin to the sky as the top of his head butted into the crook of her neck. His hair pricked beneath her chin. Kami, she couldn’t stand up to him when he was like this, laying against her. His gravelly voice was like being pressed against a rumbling amp. “Can you stay until Monday?”

Bulma hid her hesitation behind a long drag of the cigarette he passed into her fingers. At least this time he’d phrased it as a question, but it was still the same compulsive neediness he’d displayed toward her for weeks. Not that she didn’t love the attention, but something about it felt… unhealthy, like she was his new drug of choice. He couldn’t tolerate being apart for more than a few hours, especially when the circumstances were dictated by her own agenda. But without anything currently pressing, she conceded. Besides, it wasn’t worth ruining his good mood.

“My first final isn’t until Wednesday, so yes.” 

It was the answer he wanted, but not the right question. Vegeta huffed through his nose, squirming his head against her shoulder. There was something else. 

“Stop stressing out. Whatever you want, just say-”

“Do you want to come on tour?” he blurted. He was looking up at her again. His brows angled over his eyes and his lips pressed together like a spoiled child, pouting to get what he wanted. Too bad for him, she was a master of the art.

“Vegeta, do you _want me_ to come on tour?” He groaned and twisted his head back toward the sky. “Because, I won’t come unless you tell me why.”

“Why to come? Well, you’re hotter than that bald fucker. You can sell our merch.”

Was he kidding? A cardboard cut-out was hotter than Krillin, and that was beside the point. Vegeta was lying. While it sounded kind of fun, he was far too insecure to ever let her pimp the merch booth. Kami, he was no match for the short game. Manipulation of this kind required easing the reigns, a gentle give and take. 

“Flattering job offer, but you still didn’t answer the question. Why do _you_ want me to come?”

“Why shouldn’t you come? You’re my girlfriend,” he whined. Despite the momentary crack in his voice, she sensed he was quickly drumming up his defense. He lifted his head to take the cigarette back, frowning as he took a drag. A brow lifted with the corner of his mouth as he exhaled.

“And why do you want your girlfriend to come?”

“It’s a good question. It doesn’t make any sense… She’s nosy, and manipulative, and a spoiled brat.” He said these things in a low hum, almost purring as his arm wound tighter around her hip.

Bulma let a snort that was more laugh than huff. Fuck… Maybe he was good. She still goaded him on, trying to pin him to an answer he couldn’t wiggle his way out of. “And you’d miss her?”

“I would.” 

Bulma flinched where he didn’t. He’d said it fast. At first she thought maybe by accident. But the serious look in his face made her think he’d been plotting how to ask her since the band signed up for the three month long tour a week ago. For once, his response was honest—no shit-eating grin, no childish pout or queenlike sneer.

He flicked the cigarette butt to the sand and dropped his forehead against hers with that spellbinding look in his dark eyes she couldn’t refuse. 

“Is that a yes?” he asked. 

His chilly fingertips dipped under her hoodie to draw circles at the small of her back, sending her nerves to shudder up her spine and wriggle her body closer. He kissed her firmly on the lips, then her jaw, then the hollow of her neck before he grazed his teeth up her throat to meet her lips again. Sweet Kami, resistance was futile. 

She answered between kisses. “For a month... J-term... I can’t miss any more classes.”

“I thought you were smart.”

“I thought so too… but now I question my sanity.”

Bulma’s hands found themselves tugging at the back of his neck, and her chest pressed up flat against him, warm and tingling as his arms coiled tightly around her. He hummed victoriously as her mouth parted to let his tongue slip between her teeth. Her own hungry hum escaped her throat, and her arms wrapped around his neck to pull him closer until there was nothing between them as they wove their kiss together. 

Why couldn’t he always be like this? Maybe they just had to move away to some remote island, gouge out his memories with a sharp knife so his past couldn’t touch him. 

His hands dipped around her butt to pull her into his lap. He was playing with her bra clasp, threatening to unhook it when he started laughing against her lips.

Vegeta’s smile was rarely genuine, always dripping in irony, and the sound of his laughter always coated in threats. The childlike tone of it now threw her off guard. If he were anyone else, she’d be pissed that he dared to laugh while they were making out. She only pulled away with a curious smile. 

“Okay, what? Tell me your stupid secret,” she demanded.

“I can’t!” He crashed their lips together again, determined to regain his focus, but she could feel him smiling into the kiss, and not five seconds later, he was laughing again.

“Vegeta, what the fuck is so funny?”

“Nothing,” he chuckled and shook his head, failing to reclaim his composure. “Just do me a favor will you?”

Bulma lifted an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

He grunted, clearing his throat to stifle another fit. “Go ask Kakarot if we can borrow a condom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guhhhh..... I struggled so hard with this chapter. Let me know what you're feeling or not :)


	21. Know You Well Enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [bitchytimemachine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitchytimemachine), [DianaeFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DianaeFox/pseuds/DianaeFox) and[LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) for beta reading.

The very day Whis leaked the single through every popular torrenting site and anonymous tips to industry bloggers, Eighteen swore she’d heard “Cut From The Team” playing through no less than fifteen open car windows. The video followed days later, premiered on TRL. Whoever was brilliant enough to let the boys actually land hits deserved a goddamn award. The video broke the show’s top ten the next day. Every press hack wanted a bite of them. Her phone was lit with endless inquiries and requests for interviews, which she, the band’s manager, and Whis agreed would be best handled with a single press conference the day of their CD release show—an easy way to drum-up sales on the record’s opening day. It was only 3pm, and already the sales counts were turning out numbers greater than any of Icejin’s first-day figures.

Eighteen peeked out from behind the stage. The press were already setting up tripods in the empty mosh pit, feigning to chuckle at the engineer’s bad jokes as he checked the microphone levels. Four of them were placed across a long table at the front of the stage. 

This would likely go bad, just how bad was the question. Vegeta had never failed to find his inner queen when it came to press interviews, whenever he bothered to show up to one. Every answer was delivered with a sarcastic, over-the-top flair—until he either grew annoyed enough to storm off in the middle or bored enough to drop his head between his arms, pretending to nap.

Vegeta was a freight train, derailed and speeding toward the edge of a cliff. Thank Kami she wasn’t still on that ride; dealing with him at work was stressful enough. Sure, Eighteen was no saint. She liked to have fun, now and again, but Vegeta stopped being fun a long time ago. Waking up after a three day binge felt like cheating death—sick and dehydrated with sore lungs and bad memories. He pushed her past her limits, and she began to look forward the next tour, for him to be gone.

When he was arrested and sent away to rehab, Eighteen felt lighter, calmer knowing that the reigns of responsibility for him had been released from her hands. He was once again a charge of the state, at least for a few months. And she no longer had to wonder if she’d return home from work to find him dead, or have to call the hospitals whenever he’d go missing, or dread the days when he’d return from a long tour, angry and fiending for a fight—forcing her to shout back, to give in and give him anything he wanted just to shut him up. 

Goku appeared in her periphery with a taco in his hand from the cart across the street. 

“It almost time?” he asked, peeping around the edge of the stage as he took a bite. His eyes bugged taking in the throng of cameras and lights and twenty or so reporters.

“Where’s Vegeta?” Eighteen glanced down the backstage hall, but Goku only winced, grinning uncomfortably through his teeth. “Goku! I told you to keep an eye on him!” 

She should have known better than to trust the geek, especially once his manager-slash-girlfriend, whoever it was that wore the pants, left the venue claiming to be sick.

“Geez, calm down. He said he’d be right back. He’s running a quick errand with your brother. Here, I’ll call him!”

“Don’t bother. He won’t answer.” 

She pulled out her own device to call her self-serving idiot of a brother. There was only one type of errand those two ever did together, and if it compromised the press conference, or worse, the show, well… Eighteen would make herself an only child. Goku shoved half a taco into his mouth while they waited for Seventeen to pick up. 

“Shit.” She clapped her phone shut.

“What seems to be the problem?” _Double shit, fuck._ Eighteen cursed when the melodious tones of her boss floated over her shoulder. Whis had arrived, and he tipped his trendy haircut and pursed his lips as Eighteen tried to hide her anger beneath her trademark nonchalance.

“Take a guess.” she droned, folding her arms and cocking a hip. “The press are waiting, and my idiot brother ran off with Vegeta. They’re not answering.” 

Whis pulled his own phone from the pocket of his slim, black suit coat and began to text. Sometimes Eighteen wondered how the prim and proper man got involved with running a label for punks and grungy metalheads—how he managed to put up with their inflated egos, dramatic mood swings, and severely lacking hygiene with a cool smile. He’d never lost his temper or even raised his voice. Eighteen projected her own frosty composure, she knew, but inside she was screaming like a hot tea-kettle.

“Delay the press. Either Seventeen is back within the hour or he’s out of a job.” Whis said with an indifferent shrug, tucking the thin, razor phone back into his breast pocket.

The hour quickly passed, and Eighteen feared Whis would have to make good on his threat. If they wanted the press cleared out before the venue’s doors opened, they’d have to start now. She cursed her sibling under her breath as the remaining band members took their seats at the table, followed by groans and murmurs from the little crowd when it was clear the forth chair was going to sit empty. 

Eighteen leaned into the microphone. “Vegeta’s delayed, clearly... so we’re going to start without him.” 

A dozen hands hit the air, and Eighteen left the boys to run their show.

Straight away, the first question was for Raditz, asking about his beatdown at the showcase.

“Water under the bridge.” The long-haired man grinned and batted his hand. “We came to an understanding. Bandmates are like brothers, you’re gonna beat the piss out of each other, but you can never stay mad for too long. Kakarot’s my real brother; he can vouch for that!”

Damn… They were actually good. Eighteen and Whis stood at the side of the stage, watching the three lugheads artfully maneuver question after tough question. Both of the brothers seemed to revel in the spotlight. Raditz was sickly charming, like some cocky high-school quarterback, and Goku was too genuine for his own good. He dodged tricky questions almost by accident, stumbled into dumb endearments that turned the sour reporters from grumbles to guffaws.

Eighteen turned to nod smugly at her boss, but found an empty space where he’d been standing. Jerking her head behind her, she watched Whis dragging Vegeta down the hall by the elbow. Her brother, too cool for contrition, strode behind them smirking when his head should have been slacked between his shoulders like a naughty dog. 

Up close, Vegeta looked faded to the dome, his eyelids dropped at half mast, and his limbs relaxed under Whis’s stiff grip. Eighteen wondered if Whis was crazy enough to toss the high motherfucker out onto the stage. And clearly he was. 

“The lights are bright out there,” Whis said, thrusting the designer sunglasses he’d fished out of his inner suit pocket into Vegeta’s hands. 

“Whatever, it’s your funeral,” Vegeta muttered as Whis shoved him onto the stage. 

***

The chair legs scuffed loudly as Vegeta lazily dragged the thing out from under the table. He sat down with a huff of hot air expelled into the microphone. The horde of vermin stared up from the pit murmuring, and his bandmates faces were all turned in his direction.

“What?” he snapped at Kakarot next to him, “Just get on with it!”

Kakarot pointed to a reporter, lifting the floodgate to a splurge of pointless questions. What the fuck did they all want to know anyway? Were their lives so pointless they had to harp on his? 

“Hi Vegeta. Thanks for dropping by. Did you lose track of the time?” The first reporter smirked, her tone puffed-up, trying to guilt him for his tardiness.

“That your question?” he scoffed.

“Nooo,” the woman drew out with a roll of her eyes. 

Vegeta recognized the frizzy-redhead as one of the purists, a journalist for Browbeater Mag and an original Icejin fan from their earlier records. She’d interviewed him twice before. The woman was nearing forty and seemed to despise everything Vegeta represented. She bemoaned the fact that he evolved the band from brutal death metal into something more melodic, even convinced Freiza to use clean vocals. Mainstream, a sell-out… that’s what the haters whined about. Amazing how ticket sales doubled once the band toned down the _kill your girlfriend_ vibe into a _bring your girlfriend to the show_ vibe. It wasn’t rocket science. Icejin were a pile of depraved psychos. 

Still, the reporter defended them. “You’ve had a successful career for any musician, but an especially remarkable one for someone so young. All of which can be attributed to Icejin, I think you’d agree.”

Vegeta shrugged, “I think you’re overlooking the correlation between me joining the band and three gold records.”

“Maybe. But some would say adding a teen to an already successful band provided unprecedented exposure. People were curious.” 

“Seven years is a long time to be curious.” 

He’d cornered her with that one. If she was trying to prove that he’d ruined Icejin’s reputation, he’d make her eat the shit it was actually tarnished in.

“I think we’re getting off track,” she mused. “But you do have a point. Seven years is a long time to form a relationship, and my question is why, after all that time, were you kicked-out or quit… Whatever it was.“

“I quit.”

“Can you elaborate?” 

“I could,” Vegeta shrugged.

“I see…” The woman looked down at her notes, but she was faking it. He could tell by the way she glanced at her colleague under her lashes without reading the words in her hands that the bitch was up to something. “I got the opposite short-handed answer from your former bandmates,” she bragged. 

Kicked-out or quit, of course they’d have opposing answers, how was that news? But the woman went on, seemingly unsatisfied with either response. 

“It just seemed abrupt. Cancelling the last show of tour, the band’s homecoming show no less, suggests you had quite a falling out. Icejin’s management released a statement that said your frontman, Frieza Cold, had taken ill, but the show was never rescheduled. Requests for comment were all denied for months until there were rumors that you’d joined a new group, and Icejin found a new guitarist.”

“Is there a point to this history lesson?” It was quite a long-winded tale of what the press already knew, and Vegeta was antsy, jonesing for a fucking cigarette and whatever else he could fit into his head—a benzo, that’s what he and Seventeen ran out to score. But the reporter carried on with her plotless rambling. 

“Yes there is a point,” she whined. “I have a _credible_ , inside source that says you were arrested on assault and drug possession charges the night before the North City show was cancelled—that you were admitted to a hospital for-” 

“Who the hell is your source?” Vegeta tried to interject, but the woman barely paused to look at her notes before she loudly listed off his ailments like some senator shoring up votes by disparaging their opponent’s failures. 

“Three broken knuckles, dozens of lacerations and/or bruisings, a minor concussion, and alarming concentrations of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, opiates… and, now this one surprised me: rohypnol, in your system.”

Vegeta’s face heated under the lights, and whispers grew among the crowd. Someone sold him out. But before he could contend with the thought, she kept talking into the microphone for dozens of cameras and reporters to witness.

“Not only that, they claim Frieza was admitted to the same hospital in critical condition for injuries caused by an assault, not illness. Since we know you can appreciate a strong correlation, I assume you see that one. So my question, Vegeta, is not _whether_ you attacked your frontman, but _why_ you did it—and just to be clear, I’m talking about Frieza not Raditz. I see how that can be confusing.”

“Who is your source?” He growled again, with much less ferocity. 

His voice, already strained from practice, cracked under his words, which only heightened his state of alarm. Fight or flight, that’s what Bulma called his MO under pressure, and she was right. Caught in a battle of words when he wasn’t in the right headspace, he couldn’t physically shout nor consciously gather his fucking guttered thoughts after putting three lines of oxy up his face minutes before the interview. His vision started to tunnel, like a pipe full of sludge. There was nothing there to grab onto. He heard the woman talking, asking questions he’d rather die than answer, but couldn’t respond to the words. Instead, he was left to stare blankly at the cameras, with Kakarot’s appeasing hand on his knee, trying to dial him in.

“Why were the assault charges dropped, Vegeta? Something must have happened-”

Vegeta was jolted alert when Whis quickly leaned to insert himself in front of his mic. “I think we’re getting a bit off-topic. This isn’t an Icejin conference. In case you all have forgotten who’s after party you’re attending, I suggest we keep the accusations to a minimum. Who’s next?”

Reporters all shouted at once, but Vegeta heard the loudest voice that still held the microphone. Her voice pricked his ears like barbs. “Vegeta, was the assault a reaction to ongoing emotional, physical and sexual abuse? Were you the victim?”

“Are you a victim of being a horse-faced, nosy bitch?” he cried, standing as he backhanded the microphone off the table with a hiss and stormed from the stage.

Dozens of empty green rooms lined the back of the large venue. Vegeta found the furthest, smallest one and locked himself inside its adjoining bathroom. An overwhelming panic crept into his limbs, leaving them numb and tingling. His breath tightened in his chest, and the harder he tried to focus his breath and calm his racing heart, the more his lungs constricted. Knuckles clenched around the edge of the sink, he tried to hold himself upright, but every breath felt caught in his throat, like some gag reflex. He tried to swallow them, afraid they’d make noise if they passed through his teeth, but it only made it harder to breathe.

Who sold him out? That’s what Vegeta wanted to know. He hadn’t even told Vados the full extent of his downfall with Icejin, only hinted at it, gave her the bare minimum intel, enough to spare him from a prison sentence.

At first, he guessed Whis was the culprit. He was the only person who had something to gain. His obsession with well-timed, dramatic press stunts was bar none. Maybe Whis accessed his sister’s files, leaked Vegeta’s medical records to that journalist the same way he leaked the band’s single, but overlooked the fact that she would go rogue and uncover more than Whis had been willing to divulge, or even knew himself. For once, maybe the man was in over his head. 

Vegeta pulled out the contraband he and Seventeen had scored over lunch with a shaking hand—ten tablets of Valium sat in his palm. He tossed half of them into his mouth, chewing the pills to speed up the reaction. His back slid down the tile wall in the little space. Dropping his forehead to his knees, he waited with shallow, stagnated breaths for the drugs to kick in and absolve him.

***

A pounding at the door made him flinch to wake. Vegeta lifted his head from where it’d been pillowed against his forearms. The graffiti penned across the walls of the dirty little space barely came into focus. He struggled to stand, pressing the soles of his feet into the tile floor as he braced his back against the wall, woozy and half asleep. Eating a handful of benzos had no doubt taken a toll. Finding his footing, enough of it to hold the door, Vegeta cracked it open. 

Eighteen charged into the bathroom, nearly knocking him over as she snapped and locked the door shut behind her. 

“I fucking knew it,” she snarled, trying to pin him with her icy blue eyes, but Vegeta was too zapped to feel threatened.

“Knew what?”

“Vegeta, are you out of your mind? You’re supposed to be on stage in a few minutes!”

He combed his fingers through his hair, trying to clear his foggy head. She wasn’t wrong. He was definitely out of his mind. It took a second for the pieces of where and when to shift into place. “Wha-what time is it?”

“Ten to nine! Fuck! You’ve been missing for four hours!” 

Eighteen dug into her pocket and extracted a vile of cocaine. Unscrewing the cap, she carefully taped a small mound of powder onto her upturned fist between the smooth surface of her clenched thumb and pointer finger. “Sniff!”

Vegeta narrowed his eyes, stumbling as he pressed his back into the wall to brace himself. He could hardly see straight.

“You can’t perform like this! So sniff!” 

She was right. He could barely stand up. The reality of stepping foot onto that stage hit him like a bag of bricks to the face. A different breed of anxiety was threatening its way into his veins. What would the press have to say if he missed the release show too? Surely they’d think it was because of the interview. More bad news, more fucking hallowed out theories on his goddamned existence extrapolated by strangers. Vegeta bent, plugging a nostril as he set the other ungracefully over the little white mound. He inhaled sharply and tore his face away. 

“Better?” Eighteen asked.

“No. Gimme another,” he mumbled, almost slurring.

“Just wait. It takes a fucking second.” 

“Then why’d you ask already?”

“Stop pretending like you’re a fucking baby,” Eighteen scoffed as she dumped a pile twice as big into the crease of her fist. 

Vegeta hissed as he took it, smiling as he pulled his face up and felt the euphoric energy start to worm into his sluggish brain, awakening it with a force that was stronger than ten shots of espresso. 

“Happy now?” 

“So happy,” he mocked.

“Can you play?”

“Yes, master. I think I can manage.”

Eighteen snorted, a sardonic smile lifting the corner of her lip, disrupting her usually frigid features. 

The cocaine was quickly taking his head, lifting his energy into a sharp focus between his eyes. Maybe he could play… the combination of benzos, oxy and alcohol settled his nerves more than enough while the blow recovered his focus, for the next ten minutes at least. 

“You want to give me the rest of that? Say if I need a boost after a song or two?”

Eighteen stepped toward him and slipped a hand around his neck, cusped behind his head. The pressure of her grip felt familiar. But her eyes were sharp, pointed like needles trying to torture out a truth. She wanted to ask him something and couldn’t work up the balls.

The years they were together, he spent most months on tour, and when he was home, in her home, they were horribly lost in codependency. He loved her for her proximity and willingness to indulge in his vices on his level. That’s how it started. But he could never open up to her, not even when they were hopelessly faded in and out of waves of chemical-induced euphoria, running their mouths about their stupid hopes and dreams, the arcs between their hate-filled spats and long stints of silence.

Despite their open relationship, he’d return from every tour with an insatiable jealousy. Insecurity poisoned his mind, knowing that she’d probably been with other guys. Whatever indiscretions he’d indulged on the road, and there were plenty, he always made a point to push an argument over hers, berating and cruel. The need was subconscious, an urge to regain the parts of him that were ruthlessly chastened by Frieza, that left him feeling worthless and hollow. He knew that a fight with Eighteen would always end in long, time-eating binges—a series of sleepless nights that melded the days together and left him, profoundly angry sure, yet confident and satiated at the same time. 

He used her. They used each other. Maybe they loved each other once upon a time, but there was no point in wondering. Those feelings were never free from the yoke of the substances they shared. 

Every hate-filled song on their record was about her. The beloved single she pushed to release was personal when he’d written those lyrics, stuck inside a jail cell for months dwelling over her sudden abandonment. Now, it meant nothing. The song was a profit.

The Ice Queen’s eyes softened in a way that countered her usual temperament. She pulled at the back of his head, pressing their foreheads together as her hold on his eyes tried to penetrate into his skull. 

“You know me well enough to know I never loved you,” she whispered against his lips. “But we were friends, at a minimum. You should have told me the truth.”

“There was nothing to tell.”

“Nothing… right…” Eighteen’s mouth formed a hard line as she nodded. Pulling her face away, she flicked her eyes toward the ceiling and patted his chest. “You were always a magnificent liar.”

Before she turned toward the door she pinched his nose, wiping away any remnants of powder and picked up the sunglasses from the floor to place over his face. 

“Break a leg, bitch,” she smirked, waging the vile of coke between her fingers. “I’ll be on the sidelines to help you.”

***

Whis pushed his way through the venue’s growing crowd toward the balcony steps that had been roped off for the show’s VIPs. He checked his phone again. There was still no news from his twin minions on Vegeta’s whereabouts. 

Perhaps tipping-off that reporter was not his best laid plan to drum up celebrity drama. It wildly backfired when he’d overlooked the actual contents of Vegeta’s tox screen. Whis had been hoping for the old mystery surrounding his break from Icejin to breathe new life in a way that made industry headlines and furthered his bad boy image. Controversy sold more records than marketing ever could, and Vegeta’s arrest seemed to have just the right dramatic flair. But a sinking feeling in his gut told him he may have inadvertently opened the floodgates to a full-blown Greek tragedy. There wasn’t anything he could do but let it play out… Not without implicating himself.

Honestly, Whis should have known better. Frieza’s vocals were shockingly explicit when it came to domestic violence and sexual assault. It shouldn’t have surprised him that Icejin’s lyrical content wasn’t all for show, or that Vegeta was the object of Frieza’s intention. He’d had always had a morbid fascination with his young bandmate. The surprising part was the extent of it. Mere hours ago, Whis would have bet money that the animosity between them was just a cock match—Frieza’s need for control exacerbated by envy. The kid was popular. He filled venues with raging fans chanting his name. More than that, Vegeta always appeared to hold his own with Icejin, never one to hold back his temper. All of Frieza’s provoking comments and odd touches seemed to end in fist fights, not date rape. 

Whis’s only hope now was that the story would remain perfectly coiled. Any more leaking evidence or corroboration could blow his two breadwinning bands to useless ash. 

“Hello again!” a bright voice chirped at his side. It was the pretty blue doll. Even prettier than when they’d first met, and fashionable too. Besides the white sneakers, she was dressed in all black. A playful little skater dress flared out at her waist, and the v-neckline peeking from behind her leather bomber jacket left little to the imagination. Her lips were bubble gum pink, and a smoky shadow and heavy liner made her blue eyes pop like an anime bunny.

“Bulma,” Whis took her hand, turning on a charm that was almost second nature. “You’re just in time. I was about to head upstairs myself.”

“Oh!” she looked surprised. “I was actually heading backstage to say hello to the boys. But I’d love to watch from the balcony if that’s an invitation.”

It most certainly was an invitation, one that Whis realized he could use to his advantage. Vegeta’s doe-eyed girlfriend was famous in her own right, possibly enough to be distracting—muddy up the bad press with the good. The heiress to one of the world’s largest corporate enterprises getting mixed up with a drug-addled James Dean—any of the hacks upstairs would jump at the chance to run a story on the misfit lovebirds.

“Nonsense, come now. The boys are preoccupied, and there’s plenty of people I’d like to introduce you to. Industry big wigs, you know the type. I’m sure they’d love to meet the beauty that tamed the beast.”

Her smile beamed brightly at the compliment. Whis was glad to see the girl wasn’t immune to flattery. That made things easier. But she turned her head in hesitation, her gaze fixated on the stage even as Whis tugged at her hand that was still grasped in his own.

“I just think I should check-in with him. He wasn’t answering his phone.”

“Does he ever?”

“No,” she agreed with an annoyed little flick of her eyes. Whis waited with a patient smile until she began to follow him up the stairs.

“A little advice Bulma… A girl as smart and beautiful as you should leave the chase to him.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Anyone who was anyone in the scene crowded the upper balcony. Executives, press, producers, photographers, distributors, members of other West City bands and of course all of their random accessories comprised of mostly tall, chic women. 

A dirty gin martini was passed into each of their hands, and Bulma looked up from her own with a pout. “Do you want something else? There’s a whole bar.”

“No, it’s fine. I wasn’t planning on drinking is all.”

“Loosen up, Bulma. It’s your boy’s big night. Surely, you can celebrate.”

The opening band took the stage as Whis escorted Bulma from one conversation to the next. It was all chummy stuff, technically off the record. But it was the game they played. As Bulma was pitted into one friendly discussion after another, Whis primed the negotiations. MTV wanted an interview, and AP wanted a cover—all of course carefully promised with the caveat that Icejin was off limits. Let the Browbeater press hack run her half-baked story—small fodder compared to an exclusive with the boy himself and his charismatic counterpart. She had nothing but conjecture and anonymously fed police and medical records, neither of which would play well without official sources. He doubted the publication would let her run the tale without corroboration. 

The house lights flickered before the stage went dark, and Whis watched the shadows of Goku, Nappa and Raditz move across the stage as the crowd’s roar escalated to drown out the PA. Again, Whis checked his phone to see no message from the twins. He and Bulma had just taken their seats at a table at the balcony’s front and center when Seventeen wandered up the stairs. He approached behind Bulma’s back with a shake of his head.

 _Shit_ Whis cursed to himself. His useless lackeys should have delayed the show if they couldn’t find him. What the hell was he paying them for, anyway? He was about to stand and corner his employee when, suddenly, Bulma squealed along with the crowd as the lights flicked on. The prodigal punk was sauntering out from the side of the stage with his hand wrapped around the neck of his guitar. 

He looked a lot like his girlfriend in bulky white skater shoes, black skinny jeans and a tight, black band tee with the sleeves cut off. His trademark red bandana was strapped around his forehead, and Whis’s own sunglasses still clung to his face. He made a mental note to get the frames back before the junkie hocked them for drug money.

Goku’s voice broke the air to greet their fans. And Vegeta struck a chord against the face of his amp that reverberated through the venue, feeding back and around the room in a pulsing loop that swam through Whis’s ears and charged the crowd. The opening chord progression chugged beneath Vegeta’s fingers, and he spun back toward the audience on his heels with a little bounce as he stepped up to the microphone to meet Goku at center stage.

Another bullet dodged. Whis downed his drink with an airy sigh and ordered another round.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... we're getting into the muck of it now. Thoughts? :)


	22. I've Got The Mic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Putting this one out a little early even though I told myself I wasn't going to. But if it just sat on my desktop, I'd tinker with it endlessly when I could be writing the next chapters. My job was laid off, so I might have more free time on my hands to get a few queued up! Or not if I'm lucky! (Please pray for me. I hate job hunting!... Pity party over here).
> 
> Thanks for the beta read [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan)!

Four thousand voices exploded with cheers the moment Vegeta stepped into the lights. It was deafening. And it should have fried his nerves, shorted them out like an overblown fuse, but the cocktail of substances in his system had suppressed his anxiety down to a dull pulse. Fear was just a shadow buried at high noon. All the faces that stared back at him were morphed into one moving mass; their voices collapsed into a single sound, like one colossal creature shrieking and swaying in the dark.

Kakarot waited at center stage with a smile as Vegeta slipped the guitar strap around his neck to meet him. He greeted the crowd with a simple “Hey West City!” before he nodded once, signaling Vegeta to strike the first chord against the face of his amp. 

All thought slipped his brain as the sound reverberated through the room to converge with the audience’s hearty cries. His fingers began to move over the strings, fluidly, flawlessly, picking back and forth until the drums, rhythm, and bass kicked in all at once—erupting the venue into a maddening roar. 

He couldn’t stop his feet from bouncing. Two little hops, and he was facing the crowd. He was standing behind a microphone at the front of the stage, and sounds left his throat, following Kakarot’s vocals with harmonizing tones. It was… easy, energizing and completely fluid. The chorus came, and Vegeta took the lead without a thought—his fingers and lungs working in tandem as if he had no control and was just a bot programmed for this very purpose. 

The first three songs passed in a time warp, quickly, one after the next. With their change in lineup, it didn’t matter if Raditz was sauced. He could play rhythm guitar well enough now that it was all he was focused on. And Kakarot’s buoyant energy, his strong vocals, and his technical prowess on the bass guitar made him the perfect frontman. Like Nappa, the man knew his way around his instrument, when to sit back and support the songs and when to be a bit more inventive. He even bantered well—joking with the crowd just long enough for Vegeta to sneak off to the side of the stage for a little pick-me-up from Eighteen.

“This next one Vegeta and I wrote together while we were recording the album. It’s kind of a duet. He doesn’t like to sing so much, so if you all can give him a round of applause. Tell him he sounds pretty?”

A consolidated wall of voices answered him, rumbling through the room like a shared brain. 

Vegeta stepped back up to the microphone. “Sound better than you do, idiot,” he smirked, as his fingers pressed and picked against the strings. 

Kakarot’s dopey chuckle was drowned out by the deep, thundering drums. It was one of their darker songs, with heavy guitar riffs and hollering vocals. Surprisingly, the lyrics were written by Kakarot himself. The vocal arrangement was clever, trading lines back and forth, cutting thoughts in half as if they were finishing each other’s sentences. It was a battle of words that built up and up until Vegeta’s voice was the last to ring out alone after the instruments had stopped—raw and roaring over the crowd’s screams of approval.

Fuck him if singing didn’t actually feel _good_ , almost therapeutic—a release of pent-up angst and aggression, like screaming alone into an open field. Except this wasn’t screaming exactly, and he wasn’t alone. He stood among four thousand people whose energy swirled and charged the air around him. Vegeta fed off their impulses, ate up their cries like an antidote and let his lungs expel the poison he’d soaked up throughout his lifetime to meet them head on.

They ended their set with “Cut from the Team”, and it was the most exhilarating moment of the whole show. The excitement in the room was palpable. A barely contained chaos erupted through the space to split their ears the second Vegeta strummed the first chord. Kakarot’s opening vocals were accompanied by a throng of voices singing alongside him. Despite the song’s release a mere week ahead of the concert, it seemed every member of the audience knew every kami-damned word. The moment was perfect. It transcended all the festivals and arenas, the crowds of twenty thousand plus fans he’d played to with Icejin. On stage now, almost losing his breath and voice over rapid-fire lyrics, for once Vegeta felt like this was exactly the place and time where he was meant to exist. Fate cut him a break for three and a half fucking minutes. And it didn’t matter if his voice was hoarse and cracked because there were four thousand other voices there to support him.

He welcomed Kakarot’s sweaty hug and the soggy kiss he left on his temple before the stage went dark. 

The four of them piled into the green room along with Eighteen to clap each other’s backs and pass a bottle of well earned whiskey between them. The press conference was nearly forgotten, buried beneath the bliss of the best kami-damned show any of them had ever played. Not even Raditz could dent their collective mood as he picked Vegeta up in a bear hug. 

“No hard feelings, brother. That was fucking sick!” he cried.

Eighteen locked the door and sat herself in the corner to cut five lines. Even Nappa was giddy enough to take one. Only Kakarot declined, leaving Vegeta and Raditz to split his share.

A knock at the door, and Eighteen cleared her contraband before she opened it to let Bulma, Whis, and Seventeen inside. 

Kami, if Bulma wasn’t the one person that could elevate his already lofty head into another dimension entirely. Her smile was ear to ear as she bounded into the space in a baby doll dress that floated around her thighs. She cut across the room to jump into his arms. Vegeta grabbed her up in an instant, lifting her off the ground as she wrapped her legs around his hips. Her arms wound around his neck, and she buried his lips in a kiss. 

“That was amazing!” she squealed between breaths. 

His hands slipped under her dress to grip her ass, and he pinned her back against the wall, held her in place with her legs locked around his waist. Fuck these girl jeans. He needed to get her home. Coke alone was enough to charge his libido, but combined with riding the high of the best forty-five minutes of his life, his brain shorted out, and his dick took over, wondering just how long he had to wait to bury it inside of her. 

“Okay, lovebirds. Let’s keep our pants on until after the after party, shall we?” Whis dropped a hand on his shoulder. 

“I’m not going,” Vegeta declared without turning his head, focused instead on her smeared lipstick. He dropped Bulma back to her feet, but his arms still hugged around her waist. Her hips were pressed between his own and the wall behind her.

“Oh, dear boy, I can think of a hundred reasons you should go.”

Vegeta flicked his chin over his shoulder to glare at him. _Ugh_ … Whis was right. If he wanted to head off the threat of bad press, he’d need to show face. Avoiding them after the afternoon’s drama would only propel their rumors.

“One hour, max.”

“Fair enough,” Whis nodded and grabbed the sunglasses from his head. 

His hands refused to leave her body as they walked the three blocks to the after party bar. One arm swung over her shoulders and the other wrapped around the front of her waist. 

“I have to pee,” she said, the moment they entered the bar. “You wanna hold my train?”

“Your what?”

“It’s a joke. You want to come with me to the bathroom?” Bulma winked.

“Absolutely,” he agreed. But then he spotted the reporter from Browbeater at the bar, slipping her arms into her jacket as if she was about to leave. “Give me a minute. Pee first, I’ll meet you there,” he promised, planting a kiss against her lips.

First things first, put an end to the stupid journalist’s little quest.

Vegeta sidled up to the redhead at the bar, pretending he didn’t see her as the bartender gave him his attention.

“What can I get you?” he asked.

“Open bar, right?” Before the man could nod in agreement, Vegeta launched himself across the bar top to grab an entire bottle of Jameson by the neck. He tore the pour spout off and carelessly tossed it back at the man, who just looked at him dumbly as Vegeta took a long, guzzling pull from the open bottle.

The journalist was staring at him from his periphery, playing right into his hand. She sat back down on her stool and began to remove her coat.

“Second wind?” she asked, settling back into her seat.

“Second? Sure... maybe forth or fifth. Fuck it, I’ve got a whole eight-ball of wind by now.”

The woman merely arched her brows and pursed her lips, unamused and unconvinced by his act it seemed. Still, he committed to carrying on to dissuade her stupid theory. Vegeta held out the bottle, and she took it, surprisingly… The woman wrapped her hands around the neck as she tossed a puny sip down her throat and passed it back.

“Hate to break it to you sweetheart, but _Musician Does Drugs_ is hardly a story,” he said, followed by another long swig of whiskey, as if it would prove his point.

The woman smiled back darkly. “Roofies are an interesting choice.”

“What can I say?” Vegeta shrugged with an imperious air as he flicked his gaze to the ceiling. “People give me pills, and I ingest them. Maybe one slipped.”

“Sure, except it was an off day. You were on the bus, which makes me curious as to who slipped it to you and why.”

Vegeta narrowed his eyes. She was astute, he’d credit her that. But she was still barking up a tree that wouldn’t sway, not a damned inch. Anything she wanted to know about the Icejin breakup, she’d have to obtain from her beloved band. He wasn’t going to say shit about it.

The woman pinched her eyes back at him, pressing them to slits. But then she shook her head, lessening her glare, as if by pretending to be more human than soulless scandalmonger she could coax out a response.

“Look, Vegeta, I’m not trying to publicly humiliate you. The truth is I stumbled onto an online forum discussion a few months ago—a few fans of the band who shared some pretty fucked up stories. I didn’t want to believe them. Hell, I’ve always loved their music. But the more I looked into it, the more people came out of the woodwork with similar tales, and I couldn’t in good conscience look away. Then just last week, a file landed in my inbox… your file. I don’t know where it came from, but you can imagine why I’d be interested to hear your story.”

Vegeta had been on the road long enough with Icejin to know exactly the types of stories the woman spoke of. They preyed on people most nights. He’d witnessed plenty of the tales firsthand. Usually it was an attractive, overzealous fan that didn’t know what she or he was getting themselves into. He should have felt sympathy for these unwitting souls that found themselves in Frieza, Cooler or Zarbon’s crosshairs, but couldn’t. Their focus on anyone else meant they weren’t focused on him.

He tried to maintain a cocky face, but it was hard. The numbing trickle of a not-far-off panic attack was slowly gripping his limbs. “You’re jumping to conclusions. I smashed him over the head with a bottle of Jameson. That’s my story.”

“But why?”

“I was provoked.”

“What provoked you?” She was tuned in. Her eyes tried to penetrate his mask. She grabbed the bottle of Jameson from his hands, as if she thought sharing a bottle of the same half rate whiskey would get him to talk. The woman took a pull and wiped her mouth on her sleeve before she passed the bottle back. When he didn’t respond, she extolled her own theory. 

“Here’s what I think. You felt the drug coming on. You recognized what was happening because this wasn’t the first time, and you were determined to immobilize him before _it_ could immobilize _you_. The police report says you blacked out, and my guess is that you’ve had enough experience to know that you needed to stop him before that happened. Am I getting warmer?”

She wasn’t just warm. She was cremating fucking puppies. Not that he’d admit it out loud. Instead, he took a drink and shook his head adamantly to the contrary.

“Vegeta, please. I’m not trying to fuck with you! I’ve interviewed three others already, but it’s hard to validate their claims without evidence. Your statement combined with your file are all the evidence needed to lock him, or them, away. This is your vengeance! But more than that, it’s justice for everyone else they’ve abused. Don’t you want that?”

He didn’t. Or he did, but not _through_ him. He certainly didn’t want to be the poster boy for Icejin or Frieza’s justice. If the creeps were going to meet their sorry end getting fucked in prison, good, great. It’s exactly what they deserved. But it wouldn’t be by his hands. He felt his masked denial melting from his face with every word she blathered.

“There’s a statute of limitations for these things. Speak up now, or you’ll-“

“It’s not fucking true!” he hissed, but he couldn’t check his voice; the moment it broke his lips was game over. It grew louder to draw the attention of the crowd around them. “If you publish a goddamned thing with my name anywhere near it, I’ll sue you for fucking libel!”

“You’re a public figure. You can’t sue for libel. This story is coming out whether you want it to or not.” Her voice was calm, too calm, which only cinched his last nerve before his temper exploded. 

“You’re a lying, fucking bitch!” he screamed, unable to stop himself from lurching toward her as he slammed the bottle against the bar top.

The woman leapt from the stool and shuffled back, her wide eyes trained on the bottle that was clenched tightly in his fist. An arm wound around his neck and another seized his wrist, yanking him backward. They were halfway to the exit before Vegeta realized he was still shouting curses in the reporter’s general direction. Kakarot was practically lifting him off the floor, dragging him out the door that Whis held open. 

***

It was impossible to keep his grip. Vegeta flailed and lunged in his arms like a rabid animal, spitting curses through his gnashing teeth. When he managed to escape, he mindlessly spun around with his arm snapped back, ready to deck Goku in the face. But Goku sidestepped the hit and Vegeta’s fist landed against brick wall of the building behind them. If he wasn’t screaming loudly enough before, he was waking every dog in the city now, wailing in four letter words as he hopped up and down with his other hand wrapped over his split knuckles.

“Calm down… It’d be wise to keep your fingers intact, no?” Whis said, waltzing over with a godlike, unflappable aura.

Goku threaded an arm around Vegeta’s shoulders again, as if his touch alone could steer him back toward sanity. It helped a bit, all of his jumping and screaming was replaced by sharp inhales, sobbing between small gasps of air like a dying man. His teeth started to chatter, and his limbs followed suit, trembling beneath Goku’s grip as he tried to speak.

“That… fucking… cunt!… If she-”

“Settle down, Vegeta. I’m taking care of it. She’s not going to publish a word. I’ve got a meeting with Browbeater’s publishers on Monday. They’ve got nothing but conjecture based on a few illegally obtained documents.” Whis explained, his voice slow and calm, like a detached therapist who’d seen it all before.

A part of Goku wondered if he Whis _had_ seen him in this state before. Unless this was a repeat episode or Whis was a psychopath completely void of empathy, there was no way anyone could maintain that level of composure. 

Vegeta was in the midst of a mental breakdown, chest heaving, fighting desperately for air. His knees began to buckle beneath him as his entire body shook to his very core. His good fist was clenched at his chest, hanging on the material of his t-shirt with white knuckles, like his heart would stop at any moment. Unable to hold him up, Goku quickly readjusted his grip to his waist and let them both slide softly to the ground. 

Vegeta seemed so much smaller without his arrogant front, crying hysterically into Goku’s shoulder like a child. It made sense now why he acted that way, perpetually guarded, untrusting, and mean. He’d been a victim to things wildly bigger and meaner than himself his entire life, and he had no family or friends to protect him, nobody to trust until now.

He curled against Goku as he dug his shaking hand into his pocket and extracted his cigarettes, struggling to pluck one from the pack. Instead of lighting it, he held it precariously between his fingers and tapped the pack against his palm to shake out a small handful of pills he’d stashed at the bottom. Vegeta shoved them between his chattering teeth, chewing them like candies, before he put the cigarette to his lips, but his hands were trembling so bad, he couldn’t seem to work his lighter.

Whis kneeled down in front of them and took the lighter from his fingers to help him. It wasn’t a habit Goku would normally condone, but the pattern of inhaling and exhaling smoke seemed to even out his breath somewhat. 

Whis straightened to stand just as the bar door opened behind him, and Bulma cautiously stepped outside. She stood frozen in the alley, and Goku could only imagine the thoughts flooding his friend’s head, seeing him weakly huffing on a smoke, curled up and whimpering, practically fetal in Goku’s arms.

“Call a cab,” Whis directed. “It’s past Vegeta’s bedtime, and you’ve got approximately ten minutes before he turns into a pumpkin.”

That seemed to wake her. Bulma hailed a car over to the curb, and Goku hefted his friend to his feet and escorted him into the backseat. 

“What the hell is going on?” Bulma asked, climbing in after him. “I was talking to people for ten minutes, and all hell broke loose!”

Vegeta said nothing. Crying subsided, but he tucked his feet beneath him in a little ball against the door. Bulma, however, wasn’t one to let the details slide.

“Vegeta, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you crazy? Why were you screaming at that woman?”

Goku spun from the front passenger seat and shook his head. “Bulma, stop!” 

She wasn’t at the press conference, and pushing Vegeta on the topic in his state of mind, or ever, was only going to escalate the problem. Bulma furrowed her brows, not used to seeing Goku enforce a demand on her. But she closed her lips and nodded. The ride home only took fifteen minutes, but it felt like forever with nobody talking.

The cab parked out front of the apartment building. Goku paid the driver in cash while Bulma tried to rouse Vegeta from the backseat. 

“Goku! He won’t wake up!” she cried. She began to shake him fitfully like a doll, her voice lilting in panic, but Vegeta’s lips moved, barely, cursing them in a foreign language. It was déjà vu; he’d seen it play on Vegeta once before and Raditz countless times. 

“I’ve got him, Bulma.” Goku hoisted Vegeta from the cab and carried him all the way upstairs to the apartment. Thank Kami they had an elevator. He was heavier than he looked.

He deposited Vegeta onto Bulma’s bed. She wanted answers, demanded them, and Goku hated leaving her in the lurch, confused as to why her boyfriend was laid out in a comatose puddle. But even among friends or girlfriends, Vegeta’s trust was worth enduring Bulma’s scolding lips. 

“I can stay up and keep an eye on him if you want.” It was the only consolation he’d offer to stop her endless harping, even though he was fairly certain that Vegeta would be fine tonight. The more imminent threat was what he’d do when he woke up, especially if the morning greeted them with a bunch of nasty rumors floating around the scene. 

“It’s okay. I’m wide awake,” she begrudged. 

“I’ll be down the hall if you need anything.” 

Goku was about to make his exit, but Chi-Chi darted around him in her nightgown. 

“What the hell happened?” She ran over to the bed, dropping to her knees to brush a palm over Vegeta’s face. 

Chi-Chi looked up at them both, and Goku’s resolve to protect him was even more hard pressed with her. He wanted to leave the room, but found his feet stuck to the floor, his body pressed against the door frame, silent and immovable.

An odd feeling suddenly turned his stomach when Chi-Chi stood to hug her friend. Watching the girls embrace each other, standing over Vegeta’s prone form felt like a dark premonition. 

Vegeta was going to kill himself. Whether on purpose or unwittingly didn’t matter. If they didn’t do something to stop him, they’d be standing in these very positions—days or weeks or months from now—except it won’t be a bed, but a coffin.

This situation was far worse than Raditz had ever been. Raditz liked to party, but Vegeta had a death wish. Goku couldn’t watch the scene any longer and willed his feet to move, to carry him down the hallway in an attempt to leave the feeling behind. 

He was in their bedroom, gathering a fresh change of clothes when Chi-Chi came in. He needed a shower, and he needed to find a way to shut off his dark thoughts and get some sleep. It was past 1am.

“A bitter end to a good night I hear? Bulma says the show was amazing.”

“It was amazing. I wish you’d been there to see it,” he answered solemnly. 

“So what happened then? You’re the only one that seems to know.”

Goku shifted his weight. It wasn’t his place to say, and he’d never betray Vegeta’s trust by telling Chi-Chi and Bulma the contents of the press conference himself. He couldn’t shake the feeling that churned in the pit of his stomach. It felt illogically urgent. Even if, in the moment, his friend was physically fine, it didn’t stop the disturbing thoughts of the future that heated his blood. He worried that if he didn’t drop Vegeta off at some treatment center tonight, he would perish with tomorrow’s rising tide.

“I think we should cancel the tour,” he told her, biting his bottom lip. 

“What? Goku, why? You can’t!”

“He needs help now, or he’s going to die.” 

“Are you exaggerating?” Chi-Chi asked, glaring at him like a skeptical parent trying to diagnose a teenager’s seemingly melodramatic tantrum. She didn’t understand. She was all business. “Ticket and merch sales are the only way you’ll make money. It will be years before you recoup the label’s investment, and it will be impossible if you don’t play shows. We have a kid to be thinking about. You can’t put out a record and just disapp-”

“Come on, Chi-Chi. He’s our friend,” Goku reminded. “You know that none of that really matters. I can’t watch him die.”

“So what’s your plan, then? What Vegeta does is his choice! You can’t force people into rehab. You should know by now that’s not how this works,” Chi-Chi said, clearly referring to his attempts with Raditz. “And it will be easier to keep him out of trouble if you’re traveling with him. If you cancel the tour, he’s just gonna be pissed off and running around West City filling his head with Kami knows what.”

“I can’t look out for them both.”

“You need to stop worrying about your brother. Raditz can look out for himself. And you’ll have help with Vegeta. Bulma will be there for most of it... Nappa too!”

“They were both there tonight, and you saw how that turned out. I have a really bad feeling is all.”

Chi-Chi sighed and stepped up to him. She pressed her palm to his cheek. “I don’t mean to sound callous. He’s fucked up, and I love him almost as much as you do. But the truth is, everything bad seems worse in the dead of night. Please, just sleep on it. Talk to him in the morning. Be honest with him, Goku, but don’t repeat the same mistake you made with Raditz and make decisions for him. If you do, he’ll never forgive you, and then you really won’t be able to save him.”

She was right. Vegeta was an adult, and he wasn’t technically crazy. Trying to section him off to rehab without his consent was impossible. He’d tried that with his brother, and it only drove a rift between them. Raditz didn’t trust him now, and neither would Vegeta if he took the same drastic path. But it felt like the same thing was happening all over again, but exponentially worse. Raditz was self-destructive, but not without intention. Raditz liked to have absurd levels of fun whereas Vegeta was punishing. None of it was for fun. He seemed to hold enough contempt for himself and the world around him that he’d take enough of whatever substances he used just to remove himself from it and call the act vengeance.

Goku couldn’t sleep, even as Chi-Chi laid against him in perfect slumber. He wondered if Bulma was still awake, and countless times stopped himself from leaving Chi-Chi’s side to check on them. Every time he closed his eyes, he worried Vegeta’s heart would stop, stupidly, as if they were somehow connected. But that image of him laying there, he couldn’t shake it away. Every time he laid down, it felt like his own heart had slipped up into his throat, and he was going to choke on it. Maybe they’d choke at the same time, like twins whose souls were so entwined that both would die when only one was truly suffering. 

Goku woke with the sun, though he hadn’t really slept at all. He made his way down the dark hall of their apartment, hoping some food would cure his insomnia, but as he passed Bulma’s open door, he couldn’t help himself from savoring the moment.

Vegeta was awake, sitting alongside her sleeping form. He ran his hand over her head and down the length of her spine, over and over, like he was petting a sleeping cat. Until his palm planted on her head, and he leaned down to kiss her temple, lingering there. His lips pressed against her head, and his eyes closed. Maybe Vegeta really loved Bulma, more than any boy besides Goku himself ever could. Above all his stupid, selfish fronts, at least that part might be real. 

Goku cleared his throat. The sun was coming up, painting the kitchen and living area in an orangish glow. Vegeta sat down on a barstool at the counter. His hair was almost red in this light, different from the pure black of every Saiyan he’d ever known. Goku knew they’d come from the same country, but from severely different backgrounds. He was adopted as an infant, and Vegeta wasn’t so lucky. He had nothing, nobody… a child ward from a hostile state that sought his freedom through his talent, but ultimately fell into a worse trap than the one he was borne into. If what that reporter preached was true, it was no wonder he was so guarded, so fixated on making a name for himself outside of it all.

“If you’re here to lecture me, you can fuck right off.”

“I’m not… I mean, I dunno.” Goku opened the fridge and grabbed two bottles of water, tossing one to Vegeta, who caught it and pressed the bottle to his forehead.

“I know, Kakarot. You’re here to pity me. Save me from myself… I’m not stupid. I know what I’m doing.”

Goku had heard that very line from him on the ferry. Supposedly, Vegeta had it all figured out, but what _it_ was wasn’t so clear.

“You’re the most talented, driven person I’ve ever met, and you made me take myself seriously. You believed in me, Vegeta. And I wanted to believe that you just lost your way, but it’s clear to me now. You’ve been lost for a long time, maybe forever. I don’t blame you. But I can’t work with you if I’m afraid that the second I turn my back to buy a taco…”

“I’m fucking fine, Kakarot. Don’t be a little bitch. Eat all the tacos you kami-damned want. I’m not stopping you.” 

He dodged the point, trying to berate Goku into giving up on his confrontation, but Goku refused to stand down. That image of him laid out on the bed was haunting, and he wasn’t going to let Vegeta punish the rest of them, especially Bulma, over his own self-flogging hangups.

“That’s not true! Vegeta, you’re lying. I grew up with Raditz. And I’ve tried. I know the odds aren’t good, but I’m trying again with you, because you’re as much of a brother to me as Raditz ever was. If you keep going like this, you’re going to kill yourself.”

Goku held his breath, waiting for Vegeta to respond, but he only glared at him with an expression that was hard, dark and soulless, as if he’d made up his mind a long time ago that his end was coming soon, and he was almost hastening it along on purpose.

“So what? Who cares?” he finally answered, avoiding Goku’s eyes. “You’ll make your damn money tenfold if I croak. It’ll be the best laid press of all.”

It twisted his heart to hear that Vegeta didn’t think any of them cared about him beyond a profit, even though he shouldn’t have been surprised. That’s how the label treated him since he was a teenager. And without anyone else outside of the industry to look after him, he didn’t know anything different.

“I care!” Goku cried, his hands fisted around the counter in frustration as if he could bend granite. “Bulma cares, and Chi-Chi cares! Are you just saying this to be dramatic? Because it’s not funny, and I’m not going to tour with you if you really believe that. It’s this kind of talk that makes me question our business. You need help, professional help.”

Vegeta shook his head vehemently beneath the cold water bottle that was pressed to his face. “I’ve tried that. Being stuck in a glorified prison, sitting in a circle with a bunch of dimwitted criminals and prostitutes, listening to their sorry tales. Trust me, it’s far from therapeutic.”

Kami, Vegeta was so self-defeating and arrogant at the same time, Goku fought hard to refrain from reaching across the counter to slap the jackass. His fingers clenched the stone as he searched for room to breathe and collect the tired threads of his thoughts and form a response. But only dumb clichés came to mind. _Pick yourself up, try again_.

“Rehab doesn’t always take the first time,” he said. “You try again, as many times as it takes.”

“No.” Vegeta shook his head and pinched his face as if exhausted by the very suggestion. “I’m done. This band either works or it doesn’t. With or without me, I don’t fucking care anymore. Kakarot, I’ve tried _everything_ …” he choked on his words and looked away to swallow a noise that threatened to follow them. 

Goku would hug him if he let him, but Vegeta was far too proud to let anyone suffer an inch of sympathy on his behalf. That didn’t make it any easier to hold his own tears back as he watched his friend slip into an inconsolable despair, even if Vegeta refused to outwardly display it. 

Instead, Vegeta just bit his lip and stared, frowning, unfocused into the space between them, avoiding Goku’s eyes. 

“You’re the most frustrating person I’ve ever met. Sometimes I think you don’t even like me,” Goku told him. 

It wasn’t what he wanted to say in the moment, and it seemed selfish and petty, but with Vegeta, the truth was as elusive and potentially as deadly as finding a yeti alone in the woods. There was no fucking winning with him.

“I don’t hate you, Kakarot.” He ran his fingers through his hair, still without meeting his gaze. “If we just carry on, like before? Whis said he’d take care of it.”

Would he? Goku wondered. Maybe Whis had enough power to spin the press, but that was a surface level hack that meant nothing if what the press knew was actually true. Both Whis and Vegeta himself were missing the point. If that story was true, if Vegeta actually had been a victim to Frieza in that way, then he was far more damaged than Goku’d originally thought. Addiction was bad enough, but using drugs to cope with something like that seemed hopeless. Worse was that Vegeta seemed to know it, and had given up. He was determined to ride his misery six feet into the ground.

“I just think it’d be a shame to throw your life away like that. Like it’s so easy to forget the people you’d leave behind.” 

“Well, I’m sorry to be a disappointment,” he said, as if he meant it. He stared down at his split knuckles that were fisted around the bottle.

“Do you think about what it’d do to her?” Goku asked, nodding toward Bulma's door, trying to guilt him to respond. 

But he answered quickly and quietly. “Every fucking minute.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the Debbie Downer vibes. Virtual hugs!
> 
> Also... If anyone is interested in the silly playlist I have in my head. The opening song is _You Know How I Do_ , and Goku's dark duet is _There's no 'I' in Team'_ (probably written about Raditz, but works for Vegeta now too). _Cut from the Team_ is obviously the best emo anthem of all time _Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)_.
> 
> I am an insane person.. if that wasn't made obvious already, there's the proof.


	23. Campaign of Distraction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the beta read [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres)!

He wasn’t really asleep, but the warm sun against his skin carried him to the precipice. Too bad the wooden bench was too short and hard to be comfortable, putting a kink in his neck, and he wished Mrs. Briefs had something more lounge-worthy in her greenhouse. He kept his eyes shut when he heard the door creak open, expecting to hear her humming a bright little tune as she tended to her garden, but instead he almost lost his wind when the cat leapt onto his stomach with the weight of a bowling ball.

“The stylists are ready for you.” It was Bulma.

 _Ugh_... Vegeta moaned and cracked an eye. She was standing at the threshold in what appeared to be just a white lab coat and pair of high heeled boots, nothing more. The coat was unbuttoned down to her sternum, her cleavage popping between the lapels in an unabashed display. 

“That’s what you’re wearing?”

“Sexy, no?” She spun in a little circle and cocked a hip, a devilish grin spread across her face. Kami, she was loving this. 

Whis’s scheming amongst the press seemed to have worked. So far none of them had published anything more damning than his drug arrest and the fact that he threw another fit and stormed out of a press conference—the latter wasn’t news. Still, it did nothing to ease his nerves. The full story would come out eventually, he knew. It was just a matter of time. These little side dishes would only satiate the vultures for so long before they’d demand to feast on something larger.

Since the release show, his schedule was full of these sorts of appearances, and he had to be on his best behavior through all of them. A cover for AP with the full band, an MTV interview with Kakarot along with two radio appearances, and now Bulma had been wrapped into a feature with Browbeater. He didn’t know how much more publicity he could endure. They had a tour to prep for on top of it all, and it felt like he was wading through the weeds trying to keep his emotions in check and his head straight, sneaking off at every opportunity to soak up a minute alone.

“It’s a little vulgar,” Vegeta said, letting the cat fall to the ground as he stood. Her outfit reminded him of the girls on the packaging of cheap Halloween costumes. “I’m not sure Capsule Corp’s PR team will appreciate you dressed like that on the cover of a rock and roll magazine.”

“ _Psh._ It’s fine ya sourpuss. Let’s go see what _you’re_ wearing,” she said with a wag of her eyebrows. Her grin was more vulgar than her outfit, and she took his hand to drag him back inside the main house toward the small team of stylists that were bustling about in the large living room. Make-up, styling products, and racks of clothes were sprawled across the space. And Vegeta groaned as they all ran toward him practically at once. 

It was the same old costume glam he’d suffered through countless times with Icejin, sat before some young woman who fawned over his bone structure, directing him to open and close his eyes as she gobbed black liner around them. They always felt heavy and sticky afterward, like he couldn’t open them fully, and inevitably he’d get yelled at for rubbing at them. 

The hair stylist would always bemoan his coarse, unruly dreads that did nothing but spike around his head in thick tufts before giving up to let his mop just do its thing.

The wardrobe stylist would always ask about his scars and the tattoos he’d gotten to cover them. And he’d always have to shut up her stupid scar fetish by explaining they were from a childhood accident he couldn’t remember. 

“Leather pants, are you fucking kidding me?” That’s what this stylist handed him, and nothing else besides a red belt with silver studs and a pair of chunky combat boots.

A slutty train wreck, that’s all this was. Nobody was going to read the article with Bulma’s tits popping out of her jacket and these stupid low-cut leather jeans. Not that he wanted anyone to pay attention to some spun-up story of their relationship. Normally, he’d put up more of a fuss over being dolled up like a sycophant, but he was forced to play along lest Browbeater decided to publish their other story instead. 

The photoshoot was set up in her father’s basement laboratory, the theme of which he guessed was some mad scientist meets rocker glam. Shiny glass tubes and flasks bubbled with colorful liquids and an assistant was polishing one of his electric guitars.

The only redeeming aspect of the shoot was Bulma’s enthusiasm. She was a natural in front of the camera, and for once he didn’t have to pretend to be engaged in the farce. The photographer’s direction was easy when it consisted of looking lustfully at her as she fisted his guitar strap around his neck. If there weren’t ten other people in the room, he’d knock the blasted beakers from the table in one fell swoop, let them shatter in every direction, before he pinned her down and tore off that lab coat with his teeth, one button at a time. Every time she laughed, which was ten times per minute, he couldn’t stop his own lips from curling up at the sprightly sound.

It seemed that Kakarot had kept his word and hadn’t told Bulma much, if anything, about the press conference nor their conversation that morning. If he had, Bulma wouldn’t be in such a cheeky mood. Instead, she’d have hounded him over it, carted him off to some expensive ward for crazy, drug-addled boyfriends of the rich and famous. But it was odd, she was being overly nice, which for Bulma meant she wasn’t questioning and berating him over that night’s drama, demanding an explanation for the parts of it she witnessed. She never said anything more about his altercation with the reporter, nor his crying in Kakarot’s arms like a baby. Instead, she carried on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened that night. He couldn’t help but suspect she was plotting something, calculating the intel she was privy to and sourcing more. Bulma’s was a scientist, after all; scrupulous investigation was her specialty. She was clever enough to wait to play her hand until she had all of the information she could possibly parse at her fingertips.

This felt like a waiting game on both her part and that insipid reporter. He was partially exposed, and it wouldn’t be long until he was forced to confront everyone at once. Whis and Kakarot were his last defense, and it was just a matter of time before they inevitably crumbled—his life’s ultimate humiliation laid bare for all the world to witness. There weren’t enough pills on Kami’s green earth to anesthetize him from that kind of scrutiny. Just imagining it made him want to bury himself in a hole and pray for a comet to blast the entire planet to smithereens so there wasn’t a trace of him or anyone left in the wicked cosmos. At least then there’d be nobody left to mourn or pity him, or trump him up the way people always tended to sanctify the dead. If only they could exist, just the two of them, on their own private rock until the end of time. Fuck the rest of the miserable planet.

***

Chi-Chi squirmed as the doctor squeezed the cold, sticky gel onto her skin and began to trace the device across her stomach. The pressure of the little wand was more than she’d expected, and she wished she’d peed before the doctor began to push it against her bladder. She gripped Goku’s hand tighter to ignore the sensation, and they both held their breath until their child’s heartbeat began to thump across the monitor. 

“There it is!” the doctor grinned, holding the wand in place as she pointed at the fuzzy screen. “It’s no bigger than a raspberry.”

A berry? That was all? She couldn’t see it, but the sound was there; it’s little swoosh of a heartbeat chugged along, plain to hear.

Goku’s mouth hung open as he squinted at the tip of the doctor’s finger where she pointed to minuscule creature that was about to flip their world on its head. He held up his own fingers to solidify the size in a pinch between his thumb and forefinger.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s it.” The doctor smiled. “I’d say just over eight weeks old. Congratulations!”

Fuck… Chi-Chi felt the temperature of her blood heat the longer she stared at the monitor. This was happening. She was going to be a mother and Goku a father. 

He was grinning through it all as if he was legitimately happy about the circumstances, even though she knew he was stressed to the seams. Could he handle this? He could barely handle Vegeta and spent an inordinate amount of energy trying to decipher his best friend’s psychology, on top of running his own business and helping Chi-Chi to launch hers. Goku was obsessive, but he wasn’t infallible, and Chi-Chi wondered if he’d be available to spare enough of his limited time to prepare for a child, or if she’d be stranded to raise an infant alone. 

Undoubtedly, he’d be touring, and she’d be forced to survive with him being physically gone for months on end. Hell, she didn’t have a choice. Goku would prove to be the breadwinner of their tryst if the ticket sales were as good as their record sales, which were both already pushing past the analysts’ projections. People loved the band, especially with Vegeta’s drama strumming up endless intrigue. But she still worried about her own ability to raise the kid alone, and the more popular the band became, the more likely it seemed she’d be left to do just that.

“When are we gonna tell your dad?” He asked the moment the doctor left them alone to stare at a pixelated print out of their little berry.

“Let me tell him,” she said. As much as Goku was excited by their child, Chi-Chi felt an equivalent dread. 

The reverend was not going to greet the news with the same reluctant enthusiasm he’d given toward her career change. Her father was overprotective, and his nineteen-year-old daughter getting knocked-up by her rocker boyfriend was leagues outside of his moral comfort zone. Not that Reverend Ox was the kind of man that raged about the fire and brimstones of Hell. She never feared an angry outburst because her father was rarely angry. What she feared was worse, the quiet disappointment in his eyes when he looked at her and wondered where he’d gone wrong, how someone raised by him could have strayed so far off the proper path. He’d blame himself for her failures.

Chi-Chi was already testing his limits by abandoning school to run a business with seedy musicians as her clientele, not that he knew the types of people with whom she was now regularly associating. Goku was his only example, and he was an innocent outlier. 

“When?” Goku asked, he was practically jumping up and down with the photograph clenched in his fists. “If it’s a girl, can we name her Gine? That was my mother’s name. Or after your mother?”

“Whatever you want, Goku. Gine is a nice name.” Chi-Chi tried to be present as they walked to the car, or rather Goku practically skipped. Fuck, how was he so happy about this when she could barely hold back the tears that threatened to split her face wide open?

“You’ll tell him though?” Goku asked, as if he didn’t believe her. 

“Yes, Goku,” she promised, halfheartedly. “I’ll tell him when I’m home for Christmas…”

***

Despite managing to sneak out of the house without waking him, Bulma was sure she’d endure a mess of raging texts and phone calls once Vegeta realized she was gone and would be all day. He’d be especially prickly learning that his own day would be spent tuxedo shopping with her mother for Capsule Corp’s New Year’s Eve party—a function he’d be sourly forced to attend. Then again, maybe not. 

For as moody as Vegeta had been since the day she’d met him, he’d been oddly courteous the past two weeks since the concert—biting his tongue whenever her mother annoyed him with her shameless flirting, or when Goku came over yap at him over tour planning and practice, or the endless loop of photographers and journalists that cycled through the house to nab their piece of the _Capsule Corp Heiress Meets Heavy Metal Rockstar_ public romance. He was putting up a front, like he always did, but this one felt painfully forced, borderline desperate, and she was left to watch him act in front of not just the cameras, but in front of her parents and her friends. 

Whatever happened at the release show spooked him enough to swallow the perpetual contention he held toward the smallest social interaction. Still surly as hell, but he’d given up his spirited fight and succumbed to everyone’s demands of him with his head hung between his shoulders like a lifeless puppet. A lot of his darker moods were shamelessly covered up by the things he snorted in the bathroom, not even bothering to run the faucet anymore to hide them. 

Only Goku seemed to be aware of what was actually going on in Vegeta’s head since the release show’s dramatic after party, and her friend was annoyingly tight lipped whenever she managed to get him alone to question him, which wasn’t often. 

Well, today she was going to break him. Kill two birds with one stone so to speak. She’d volunteered to tag along not only to trap Goku in a car for four hours to Mount Paozu and get him to fold on his secrets like a cheap lawn chair, but also to finally meet with Fasha—her own secret errand. 

It had been an offhand conversation when he’d come to practice that he was planning to drive out to meet with Chi-Chi’s father after the holday; though what he was meeting Reverend Ox about was another mystery. For someone who wore his heart on his sleeves, her friend was unusually full of secrets these days, and Bulma was beginning to feel bitterly out of the loop. 

_'Here!'_ she texted, but before she’d even looked up from her phone, he was already bounding down the driveway to meet her, a grin spread across his face.

“Hey there alter boy! Never thought I’d see you this excited for church.” He was dressed in a nice, albeit a little rumpled, plaid button up and his best fitting pair of girl jeans. 

“Come on, Bulma. This will be fun. I like road trips! We should stop for snacks though.”

“You gonna explain why you’re meeting the reverend alone?”

“You can’t tell nobody.” His grin stretched wider, if that was possible, bugging his eyes as he buckled his seatbelt, waiting briefly for her to nod in agreement before he’d disclose his first secret. “I’m gonna ask Chi-Chi to marry me!”

 _What the hell?_ Bulma’s hand froze over the gear stick. His declaration so far out of left field that her brain was left to stutter in dumb fragments that spilled from her mouth without filtering them to her usual mindful standard. 

“Goku!... Why?... I mean... That’s... exciting?” It took a second to let her head catch up and deduce exactly why the moment fell short of what she’d expected it to be. Of course Goku and Chi-Chi would tie the knot. But she imagined it to be years from now, when they were mature and successful adults capable of making such permanent life choices. Not smack at the pinnacle of the chaos they were all feeling with the record’s release, the upcoming tour, and—though she felt selfish for thinking it—Vegeta’s plummeting morale. Unless…

“Don’t tell me she’s pregnant.”

It was meant to be a joke, but Goku’s grin hardened and he giggled awkwardly. The haze around the situation suddenly shifted into focus, but despite the fact, Bulma still failed to find the right words. 

“Nine weeks now,” he said. “Crazy, right?”

It was crazy, and it was hard to be happy for him when her own relationship was on life support. Not that she was in any hurry to start a family. Hell, she wasn’t even sure she’d ever want children, but it stung a little to see Goku, her oldest friend and an immature one at that, suddenly launching up the rungs toward a happy, stable life. He and Chi-Chi in a matter of months had become a force to envy. And she’d been the one to set them up! 

Bulma had always been programmed for an easy, perfectly predestined future, considering her upbringing and the resources at her disposal. In a plotted out world, she’d be leading the entire R&D department at Capsule Corp., but for some reason she couldn’t logically define, she’d always balked at that life. Instead, she chose the most difficult path, especially when it came to her relationships. She had a stubborn, independent, perhaps destructive streak. There was something unsatisfying about playing by the rules that were laid out for her. 

Yet every now and then, she was struck with doubt and left wondering if she’d made too many wrong turns to ever reverse from the rogue path she’d chosen or even find her way forward out of the dark. From the second she’d Googled the name Vegeta Ouji, it was too late. She was in too deep, lost in a lightless wood with hardly a path to go on, constantly tripping over every hard root and dodging falling branches. 

He was texting her. She felt her phone vibrating in her pocket, and before she could answer Goku or shift the car to reverse down the drive, she pulled it out to read two words: _'Come home'_.

More than anything she wanted to turn the car around, go home and cradle his stupid head, smell his hair while he slept against her wasting another day in bed. But more than that, she wanted to come home with news, good or bad. Vegeta deserved one way or the other to know what happened to his family. Whether answers would bring him peace or not was another question entirely. Perhaps she was fated to be with him because the stability of her circumstances offset the utter train wreck of his own. Before she could embark on her day’s quest she had to tell him the one thing she did know beyond a doubt. The thing that turned all of the stress and distraction he’d brought to her life on its head.

 _'Love you. Home soon.'_

“You never said why you’re heading to Mount Paozu,” Goku said, his voice shifting to a lower octave to interrupt the extended silence. Bulma had backed down the drive without so much as acknowledging that he’d just spilled two bits of monumental, life changing news. Marriage and children, two events a good friend should know to greet with supercharged squeals and a year’s worth of attention, yet she couldn’t even tell him she was happy for him. 

“Sorry, Goku. My brain is pinging three hundred cell towers right now, and you just broke the grid.” She felt terrible that she couldn’t reflect Goku’s joy, or even fake it. Kami, she was a terrible friend. She couldn’t leave him like that, shot down when they should be celebrating.

“It’s okay. I know you’ve got a lot to worry about.”

It was just like Goku to kick a girl while she was down without really meaning to. They hadn’t even made it down the block, and she was pulling the car to the curb. 

She leaned across the console to hug him, determined to pack away the original intention she had for this trip, for now, and give Goku the unabridged attention he deserved. “Goku, I’m really proud of you. Both of you. I promise I will make the best goddamn aunt, bridesmaid, whatever you want!”

“It’s okay!” he said again with a squeeze against her shoulders. “I’m worried about him too.”

Never had the selfishness of Vegeta’s affliction made itself so blatantly obvious than to realize how deep Goku was stuck under the weight of it all, unable to fully appreciate his own turn of fortune because a seismic chunk of his pure and spotless soul was burdened by whatever secret Vegeta had told him. Goku was good at hiding stress behind his glowing smile and seemingly carefree persona, but she’d been friends with him long enough to spot his weakness. He was empathetic, with a stunning capacity to apprehend other people’s state of mind at the cost of his own. 

“You don’t have to do this alone, Goku. Tell me what he told you, and I can help. For fuck’s sake, I’m his fucking girlfriend!”

“I know,” he muttered and pulled away, twisting his palms together, staring down at them as if they held the answer. “He doesn’t wanna be helped. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and that’s the problem.”

“What are you trying to say?” she asked, her words hitching in her throat, as if her breath, steps ahead of her brilliant mind, already suspected the answer.

“Said he’s done trying is all. I wouldn’t exactly say suicidal, but–”

“Purposely careless... hopelessly negligent... asshole?”

It was a blow to hear the words, even though she’d sensed it in him all along. Suddenly, the whole trip to meet Fasha seemed stupid and insignificant in the grand scheme. Even if she picked up another kernel on the trail to find his family, somehow she knew it wasn’t going to be enough to stop the slow creep toward what Vegeta assumed was his only out. Not even she could stop it through the sheer force of the unconditional love and support she smothered him with. He balked at everything, and she probably made it worse, enabled him in a way. To know that Vegeta didn’t imagine a future for them, let alone one for himself, was a critical stab. All the days and nights they spent wrapped up together were nothing but a band aid to ease him toward his end. The fact that he told Goku with his own two lips only hardened the facts she’d been ignoring all along, and it felt like her organs had been replaced by cement leaving her stuck to the chair unable to move.

“Do you need me to drive?”

“You don’t know how to drive a stick-shift.”

“It’s okay if you wanna go home. I don’t blame ya.”

“No,” she shook her head. Cornering him wouldn’t make a difference. Fasha’s knowledge was still her best bet. Before she put the car in gear, she texted her mother. 

_'Don’t let him out of your sight.'_


	24. Keeping You Up Nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo! Sorry for the little haitus last week. I was not happy with this chapter and had to set it aside for a bit, and all those TPTH Smutfest fics were very distracting! 
> 
> Big thanks to [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) and [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) for helping me sort out this mess!

“You sure you don’t want me to come?” Bulma asked. 

Even if his best friend had offered out of sincerity rather than her own nagging guilt, he still would have declined. Asking the reverend for his daughter's hand in marriage after she’d just dropped the news of their pregnancy on him would have looked a little odd with her roommate in tow. This was a solo mission.

“It’s okay, Bulma. Thanks, but I’ve got it.”

Goku lifted his frame from Bulma’s tiny car and straightened in the sunny drive before Chi-Chi’s childhood home, swinging his arms around him to crack his back, followed by his neck, then fingers. 

It wasn’t the decrepit, backwoods country that his girlfriend described. The little house was quaint and well kept, crouched low in a grassy clearing right at the foothills of Mount Paozu itself—the woods that horse-shoed around the structure being the only thing that separated their home from the rocky slopes behind it. 

Kami, it was picturesque, a place where Goku could see himself settling down years from now. Maybe he’d build a recording studio in a spot exactly like this and become an engineer for other artists. He knew a lot of bands that would kill to escape the noise of the city to find a solitary venue for creative pursuits. It was half the reason he’d sought out Master Roshi’s studio in high school. Something about escaping the urban landscape he’d grown up in was calming, decluttered his head and left space for writing something new. Maybe it’s what Vegeta needed, he wondered… space. He’d been stuck in North City most of his life, an even worse claustrophobic, pressure-cooker than West. They could run a recording studio together.

He exhaled the thought with a puff of air. The crunch of gravel as Bulma reversed down the drive behind him brought Goku back to his present reality, stranded in front of the cottage to face Chi-Chi’s father alone. It was now or never. Goku forced his feet to carry him to the front steps, trying to untangle the soft panic that knotted in his core. 

Even though Chi-Chi claimed her father had digested the news quite well at Christmas, she was stingy with the details, and her temper swelled exponentially every time he asked. Maybe it was hormones; the doctor had mentioned something about that. But maybe she was lying, and her father wasn’t as accepting of the situation as she’d said.

Goku felt like he had so much to prove. The reverend—though he tolerated Goku on some level during their last encounter at dinner so many weeks ago—still failed to hide the long, disappointed sighs between bites of food, or the critical gaze he shot toward the two as he listened them debrief over the video shoot with the animated delight of kids climbing out of a rollercoaster. Goku was a downgrade, and he hoped Chi-Chi would have done better, fallen in love with a stock broker or lawyer instead of some low life musician. 

Before Goku could lift his clenched fist to knock, he heard the woof of a dog and turned to see a black Labrador charging around the back of the house, running straight for him with its tongue happily flopping from the side of its mouth. 

“Hello!” Goku greeted the dog as it jumped up to meet him. Darn, the thing was cute! It was big, and practically reached his chin as it stood on its hind legs, its front paws planted against his chest as it leapt toward his face. Goku let the animal tackle him, and he dropped to the porch to roll around with it, rubbing the pup’s face between his hands, letting it lap kisses over his own face. 

“Goku?” The reverend's voice rang from the yard, and Goku felt slightly embarrassed that the man found him on his back with the dog standing over him, licking him relentlessly.

“Uh… Hi Reverend Ox! This your dog?” Goku looked from under his elbow at the big man who approached from the long drive and up the porch steps to hover over them.

“It is. Got ‘em when Chi-Chi left for college to keep me company.”

“He’s real cute,” Goku said, pressing himself to sit, still rubbing the dog’s ears trying to think of how to phrase the question he came to ask. But, now that the reverend was here, his shadow looming above him, more imposing than the mountain at his back, the words seemed to slip from his head. It wasn’t a surprise; Goku always sucked at expressing himself when it counted, constantly getting tongue tied. Like when he was explaining himself to Vegeta after the concert, he could never say what he wanted to, and let himself blather all the wrong things and get walked on. If he’d said the right things that night, maybe Vegeta’d be better, or maybe he’d have been able to say the right things to Bulma today to make things better. But he always seemed to fall short when it counted, and now that he was petting the reverend’s dog, he couldn’t part his lips for anything but compliments on the pup. “Real nice dog you’ve got!”

“Why are you here, Goku? Is Chi-Chi okay?”

“Yeah! She’s great! Why’d ya ask?”

“Well…” Revered Ox glanced around the yard, as if he expected his daughter to appear and make sense of their encounter.

“Oh!... No, I’m here alone,” Goku answered. He fumbled his way to his feet, ignoring the dog that continued to try to nab his attention, leaping up at him as he stood. “I um… I wanted to ask ya somethin’.”

“Down!” Reverend Ox scolded the dog with a word, which sent it to obediently sit at his heels, except for its tail, which still wiggled behind its butt with a wormish life of its own. 

He looked back toward Goku expectantly, his eyes narrowed with a puzzled concern. Her father was clearly distressed by his sudden appearance, probably wondering why Goku had shown up out of the blue this far from the city without Chi-Chi. “Everything okay, son?”

“Everything’s fine!… I uh… I’ve just been tryin’ to figure out how to ask you properly. Cause you know I love Chi-Chi a lot, and you bein’ her dad and all. And I always loved her since the day I met her, and I’ve been plannin’ on this anyway, before she got pregnant, believe me!”

The reverend had been nodding in slow, curious agreement through his whole mouthy spiel until he hit those words. His face suddenly twisted, and before Goku could register the snarl that stole the reverend’s peaceful demeanor, he was shoved against the side of the little house, held to the wood siding by his throat. Her father was twice his size, and his elbow pressed against Goku’s windpipe without a thought. He couldn’t speak, could only stare at the reverend’s snarling teeth and listen to the dog whose own disposition switched on a dime, barking at his hip, leaping toward his face as if it, too, wanted to tear out his throat. 

“What did you just say?”

“I… can’t… breathe!” Goku squawked.

“Did you knock up my daughter, you deadbeat?” Reverend Ox loosened his grip enough to let him slip an explanation.

“Yes! I’m sorry!” Goku cried. “I thought she told you!... And I’m not a deadbeat! I’m an… an artist! I’m not a lawyer or nothin’, but you knew that! Why’s this any different? I love her all the same!”

Her father’s outburst fell flat on his face. He tore his elbow from Goku’s neck, and he backed away, looking at his palms as if they’d betrayed him. There wasn’t a difference, not to a reverend, Goku knew. Love was love, no matter the source. He’d be a hypocrite if he denied them this request, no matter how difficult it was to accept.

“But... she’s pregnant?”

“I know!” Goku agreed. For once he wasn’t the last one to catch on to a concept. “That’s what I’m tellin’ ya! She’s pregnant, and I wanna marry her and make it right. I was gonna anyway!”

“You were going to what?”

“Marry her! Geez, why’s it so hard to understand? I wanted to marry her from day one! Even if she wasn’t pregnant, I’d still love her the same.”

The reverend stepped backward further, trying to find space between his conscience and the anger he’d shown through his rash assault. He ran a palm down his face, clearly embarrassed by his outburst and shook his head forcefully as if the action would settle the words into his head.

“Chi-Chi is pregnant?”

“I’m sorry! She said she told you! An’ I don’t care if she didn’t, or if she lied, ‘cause I’m… I’m happy about it! I’m sorry! I didn’t know you didn’t know!”

He ran his palm across his face again and commanded the barking dog to sit, which it did without so much as another whimper.

“I… I uh… No I _didn’t_ know,” he said quietly with his hands splayed in the air between them as if he felt an uncomfortable shame for tackling Goku to the wall. “You’re sure?”

“Nine weeks now,” Goku said. He pulled the sonogram from his back pocket and held it out.

The reverend took it from him with a shaky palm and examined it in silence. The longer he stared at the photo, the more his features softened, lessening the pinch between his brows.

“You wanna marry her?”

“Since the day I met her… Sir. Long before all that happened,” Goku said, gesturing to the photo.

“Well, as much as I didn’t wanna admit, I guess I can’t argue that you aren’t a stand-up guy, Goku,” the reverend said quietly, not tearing his eyes from the sonogram.

“Does that mean you’ll let me marry her? I promise, I’ll be kind and lovin’ and I just wanna-”

“I’m sorry kid,” he said without looking up. “I don’t mean to put this on ya like I don’t trust ya. If I’m bein’ honest, you haven’t given me a reason not to, besides your profession and lack of education.” 

Goku felt as if his heart would drown under the words. Her father, like most people, looked down on him because he didn’t have anything beyond a hard-earned high school diploma, and on top of it, they all thought he was some delinquent punk. Just because he played hardcore music and dressed the only way he felt comfortable, he was disqualified from being husband material. But he was going to be a father, and whatever anyone thought about him, he wasn’t backing down. 

“Look a minute! Reverend Ox, no disrespect, but–”

The reverend interrupted, clearing his throat. “Come with me, son,” he said with a heavy sigh and gestured Goku with a wave of his big hand to follow him inside the house.

***

The little cottage was a bit drab. The floorboards shifted and groaned in their death throes as Bulma carefully crossed the porch, hoping her foot wouldn’t break through them. And the front door was in an equal state of disrepair with hardly a chip of paint left on the greying wood.

She knocked. The old sedan in the driveway told her Fasha might be home… if this was still her residence. But the place almost looked abandoned. The yard was unkempt, with long grass and wildflowers nearly grown over the dirt driveway. But then...

“One minute!” a woman’s voice, heavily accented, sounded on the other side. Bulma waited, listening to the shuffles and movement in the house. The woman wasn’t kidding when she said it would be a minute before she answered the door. She was older, maybe nearing seventy, with short-cropped grey hair and dark, almost black eyes that squinted back at Bulma with a quizzical tilt of her head. “Can I help you?” 

“I’m sorry to drop in out of the blue, but do you happen to be Fasha Tomma?” 

The woman nodded, furrowing her brows as she waited for Bulma to continue. 

“My name is Bulma Briefs, and I’m trying to help a friend of mine track down some information on a neighbor of yours. Do you have a moment?”

“Uh… I suppose. Come in,” she said, opening the creaky door wide enough for Bulma to step inside. 

The state of her home was just as run down as its exterior. Perhaps Fasha was a hoarder. Newspapers and books were stacked on every surface in the small living space, even across the faded floral material of her couch and the stone hearth of her fireplace. Only one recliner and a side table were free of debris. It smelled mustier than Master Roshi’s beach house, and dust speckled the air where the sunlight peeked through the cracks of her heavy curtains.

“I’m sorry for the mess. I just...” she held out her hands. Her fingers were badly disfigured by arthritis, Bulma guessed.

“Please, don’t apologize. I’m sorry for the intrusion, it’s just that–”

“Is this about the fence? I told Mr. Idasa that I cannot pay to fix it until spring. This is when the Ikose boy returns from school and promised to help with the repairs. I told them I do not like the boys shooting guns, and the moment I report them they come back about a silly fence!”

“No! Of course not. I don’t blame you!” The way Vegeta leapt from his skin at every backfiring car in the city, Bulma could understand. “I’m not here about your current neighbors, but an _old_ neighbor of yours, from your home country, Saiya.” 

The woman tipped her head again, jerking her head back as she pressed her lips together in a near shock, as if trying to imagine how on Kami’s green Earth a young stranger would drop-in with questions of Saiya. Though she appeared relieved that she wasn’t being hounded by whatever dispute she seemed to have with current residents in town, she still remained where she stood in the little entryway with arms folded and brows bent, waiting for Bulma to explain her visit.

“Do you know Ana Ouji?”

“Romana!?” The woman’s eyes widened as a smile burst across her face. “Of course! But, what do you know of her? This was so long ago!” 

“Sixteen years,” Bulma answered.

“Ah… Romana!” Fasha interrupted with a breathy sigh. “Sweet, pretty girl. She was like a daughter to me.” Her gaze drew inward as she shook her head and smiled fondly in reminiscence, before she recalled that Bulma was there and her bright smile turned toward her, waiting.

“I know her son,” Bulma said. She pulled the rolled Browbeater magazine from her coat and held it out, a little embarrassed for a woman like Fasha to see her posed like that, but it was the only readily available picture of him she could scrounge up from the backseat of her car.

Grabbing the rag from her hands, Fasha unfolded it as quickly as her fingers would allow. 

“But no!…” she gasped, reading the cover. “This is… _Vegeta!_ ” She inhaled a sharp breath of air, her hand clasped to her chest. “I do not believe it! We thought he was gone. We could not find him after…” She paused and shook her head as if trying to dislodge the memories. Her hand moved to pinch her chin below her her lips that quivered, as if saying anything about the bombing out loud would playback all the horrible scenes from that day. “I cannot believe the boy is alive. It is incredible! All grown up, he looks like his father.”

“You knew his father?”

Fasha wiped her eyes and tilted her head, a smirk drawing over her lips. “Famous pianist of the royal court moved to a little border town like ours, pregnant. We all suspected such things. The king of ours was not very good at sneaking. A few times, he visited with these guards in the night. And this boy had so much hair like his.” She wacked Vegeta’s image on the magazine.

“What happened to Ana? Vegeta doesn’t know I’m looking for her. But if I can find her...”

Fasha’s impish grin quickly faded and a grim expression slipped into its place, pain evident in her eyes as she looked away to wipe them on her sleeve. “Oh dear, no… I’m sorry, but Romana... She is dead. I delivered the baby myself.”

Fasha didn’t look at her as she said it and missed the flinch in Bulma’s face as she digested the confirmation of his mother’s demise with the weight of a sinking stone. Instead, Fasha was trying to pry open the magazine with her mangled fingers, almost desperately, in search of more photos of Vegeta, like a silver lining had finally surfaced after all these years.

“You mean the baby survived?” Bulma swallowed the bad news, and with a shaking voice tried to focus on the bit of good.

“He did! This is who I thought you spoke about. Not Vegeta.” She looked up for a moment before she fixated again on the featured article and sighed warmly, taking in his pictures with glowing eyes. 

It shouldn’t have surprised her that Fasha didn’t follow young rock bands, but she was a little shocked that she didn’t know Vegeta existed, especially lately. Vegeta was on every magazine stand across the country. 

“He is handsome! And he likes music like his mother; it makes me happy. You are his wife?” She glanced up at Bulma. 

“Girlfriend, technically…” Bulma grinned back, letting Fasha contentedly flip through the pages before she pried her for more information.

“Do you know where I can find him? The little brother?”

“No, I am sorry. I know he was adopted by a family here in the west, but perhaps they changed his name.”

“What was his name?”

“Romana said to call him Tarble…” She paused, her face slacking as if taking a moment to mourn her friend before she lit up again. “Ah! I have something you can take to Vegeta.” She closed the magazine quite suddenly and gestured for Bulma to follow her down the hall.

Fasha stood on a step stool in an extra bedroom she had converted into an art studio. Though it seemed as if the room had gone unused for decades. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust or covered in tarps, all her projects left abandoned. Bulma realized from the styling of the drawings that were sprawled in dozens of sketchbooks and painted across canvases still propped against their easels—Fasha had been the artist that rendered that image of his mother on the flyer.

Bulma reached up to help the woman pull an old, dusty box from the top shelf in the closet of the messy space. It was full of old files and folders. Fasha picked through them and seemed to find the one she was looking for, growing excited as she shook off the dust and opened it. 

There were dozens of photographs of a young Vegeta with his mother. They were in a garden. The colors were a little faded, but a wall of pink bougainvillea flowers popped in the background of every composition. 

“I practiced on them often. Such a cute little boy, but _so serious_.” Fasha scrunched her face in mockery before she softened again, taking in the images as if she was seeing them for the first time. “Ana… she was–”

“Stunning.” Bulma finished.

She was so young—their age, early twenties, and petite like him, but with olive skin, large dark eyes and pixie features. Her unruly auburn-brown hair was tied up in a messy coif like a 1960s housewife, a pink bandana tied around it. She smiled in every photo with dimples in her cheeks. Vegeta was serious in most of them. That wasn’t a learned trait, it seemed. Yet it wasn’t the cold, hard features engraved upon him now, but more of a pensive curiosity, like he was borne into the world knowing he was the cherished secret between two ill-fated lovers. 

In equally as many photos, he smiled at her; though, he never appeared innocent, a promise of mischief laid behind most of his grins. There were at least fifty photos from every angle, and while they all expressed a life that died long before Bulma met him, there was one above the others that nearly split her heart down the middle—a close up of him in his mother’s arms, where her profile grinned at at him and he puckered his lips, kissing the air between them with his eyes closed, backlight by the sun peeking through that wall of pink flowers.

“Can I give him this one?” 

“Please, take as many as you wish,” Fasha said. “May I keep this?” She held up the magazine. 

Bulma grimaced out of embarrassment, but Fasha didn’t seem phased by their attire. Instead, she looked at the cover, at Vegeta, like she’d caught a ghost in the light that had been haunting her for years.

“Of course!” 

“This is a strange visit. I’m glad you’ve come to see me. I hope you find the little one. You will tell me? Perhaps you will visit again with the boys? I did love Romana and Vegeta like my own.”

“I intend to, Fasha. Thank you. You’ve helped more than you know,” Bulma said as she carefully stuffed the photos back into the manila sleeve.

***

The house was always quiet this time of night. Her parents, as lively and social as they were on the weekends, tended to keep themselves contained either in the labs or their own wing of the estate after dark when there weren’t any pressing social engagements. And Vegeta was always in her bedroom, passed out or close to it, which is why it surprised her when the cat greeted her at the front door, meowing relentlessly when it was usually with him.

“What the fuck do you want?” Bulma hissed back at the creature and had half a mind to kick at its annoying screeching, to shush it down the hall with the tip of her tennis shoe.

Eight hours in the car, plus an hour at Fasha’s was enough drama for one day. She wanted nothing but a hot shower and to cuddle up to her drug addled corpse of a boyfriend and call it a night. She’d tell him most things tomorrow, show him the photos and all, once she had her head straight. His fucking brother was alive! Whether she’d tell him that bit yet, she couldn’t decide. It depended on his mood… Sometimes when he was high, he was remarkably compliant, and would maybe welcome that kind of news even though she hadn’t actually found the boy. But the logical side of her knew better than to get his hopes up. 

She entered the bedroom to find it empty, not a sheet turned. Bulma reversed her path back through the house in search of him, or her useless mother. But there was no sign of anyone.

“Fuck off you stupid rat!” She screamed to the cat who had followed her all the way to her bedroom, low howls bellowing at her heels.

“Dear?” her mother’s voice rang over the balcony of the living room where Bulma had screamed. “What on earth are you shouting about?”

“I told you to keep an eye on him! Where the fuck is he!?”

“Calm down, sweetie. He said he was going skateboarding.”

“When?”

“Oh, I dunno? Maybe round six?”

“Six? That was six hours ago, mother! Are you fucking kidding me!”

“I don’t understand what the problem is, Bulma,” she brushed off her daughter’s lip with an absent shrug. “He was getting kind of snippy. Seemed like some fresh air would do him some good.”

“The problem is that he’s a fucking maniac, and you just let him go! I asked you to look out for him!… Fuck!” 

Ignoring her mother, she ran outside to call him. The rings against her ear sounded like death knells the longer he didn’t pick up. Bulma spun around the empty driveway, her phone clung helplessly in her grip as a sob climbed up her throat and broke the air. She couldn’t stop it. She knew she sounded ridiculous to anyone within range, but she couldn’t help but fear that Vegeta was reckless enough to make his next bender his last, especially without her around to rein him in. He was gone, doing who the hell knew what, and she had no way to reach him. 

She found her fingers hitting send on the phone number of last person she ever expected to call out of sheer desperation.

“What do you want?” Eighteen picked up.

“Do you know where Vegeta is? He’s missing.”

“If you’re calling for advice, Bulma, I’d say go to bed. If he’s missing, he’s not coming home, not tonight, and maybe not for a few nights. Get used to it.”

“You don’t understand, he’s–”

“Oh, I understand perfectly. Bulma, I’ve got fucking hospitals on speed dial, so don’t pretend like I’m the bitch he made you think I am. He’s yours now. Consider the baton passed. I advise you to do the same if that’s what’ll help you sleep at night.”

“Wait!–”

But Eighteen hung up, left her stranded in her driveway to picture the worst possible scenarios on purpose, like she was sadistically glad that she wasn’t the only person Vegeta put through the ringer of his inconsistent moods. Bulma could practically hear Eighteen laughing on the other end, even though she’d hung the line. She wasn’t going to bed. That was for damned sure. Bulma ran inside to find the phonebook to call the hospitals, call the jails… call anyone and everyone to save him from himself.


	25. So Sick of Being Tired

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger... !! Gonna leave a trigger warning for the rest of the fic here. Shit gets pretty dark from here on out in terms of suicidal tendencies and substance abuse.
> 
> As always, big thank you to the girls who have to read my crappy drafts, and give me awesome encouragement despite the utter horror! [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) and [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) are some real gems.

Bulma was on the line with one of the West City precincts when her phone began to beep against her ear. She pulled it away, surprised to see the girl’s name on her display. 

“Hold on, ma’am! I’ll have to call you back!” she told the cop before switching to Eighteen’s line.

“Found your lover boy,” her monotone voice droned. “He’s down the block from my flat at Duffs. I’m headed there now. Call me when you get here.”

Bulma pulled up to the curb outside the dingy metal bar to see a crowd of people starting to gather on the sidewalk. From their energy, the way they huddled like a scrum, shouting and shoving one another, something was about to go down, and she had a sinking feeling that Vegeta was the instigator. As much as he claimed he didn’t like attention, he always managed to make himself the center of it. 

She turned on her hazards, double parking out front so she was able to see exactly why people were circling around the bar’s front doors like buzzards waiting for a carcass. 

Vegeta and Eighteen were screaming at one another, their faces tight with rage and pressed so close together, they could probably feel the flecks of spit raining from each other’s snarling teeth. Their public spat had drawn the attention of everyone in their radius, and the crowd that had circled around them threatened to join in. Vegeta caught her by the wrists, and Eighteen clenched her fists, tipping her chin to the air as she twisted out of his grip. Bulma rolled down the passenger side window just as Eighteen’s balled fist collided with his cheekbone. The collective gasp that swept through the crowd was quickly overturned, erupting in wild roars. Vegeta staggered, but recovered quickly from the blow, and lunged toward her with his hand wound over his shoulder, about to backhand her in retaliation. Three guys jumped on him, one inserted himself between him and Eighteen as the other two yanked him backward. 

“Vegeta! Get in the car!” Bulma screamed. Was he really going to hit a woman? 

He glanced at her, but his focus quickly returned to his ex, snarling at her in four letter words. Eighteen was no better. Curses flew from her mouth just the same, like they would eat each other alive if it weren’t for the good samaritans that forcefully kept space between them. The guys that were holding Vegeta by his arms began to pull him toward Bulma’s car. Someone opened the door, and the others shoved him into the passenger seat, snapping it shut. Bulma frantically pressed the locks and began to roll up the windows as Vegeta continued to shout every expletive known to man out the window. They didn’t stop even as the glass closed, the car pulled away, and Eighteen could no longer hear him.

“What the hell was that about? Were you really going to hit her?”

Bulma was still trying to digest the notion that Vegeta was not above hitting a woman, even one as vile as Eighteen, who seemed to be asking for it. There was no circumstance on the planet that would condone that sort of behavior.

“She started it… Fucking bitch.” He snorted out of his nose and began to whack the back of his head against the seat in consecutive beatings.

“Oh grow up, Vegeta! What were you doing out, anyway? Getting wasted because you’re mad I had plans today?”

“Tch…” he hissed, finally dragging his attention from the bar behind them to focus his fiery gaze on her. “Am I not allowed to leave the house without your mother? I don’t need a babysitter, Bulma. If you want to spend all day with Kakarot, do you really expect me to sit around patiently waiting for you like a good little puppy?”

“Oh my god, is that what this is about? You called Eighteen as payback because you were jealous that I spent the day with Goku?”

It shouldn’t have surprised her. Vegeta was controlling and petty. He didn’t like her hanging out with her classmates, who he didn’t know. But Goku was his friend; Goku was her best friend, and neither of them made a fuss when Vegeta and Chi-Chi spent time together. Neither of them planned to bring up the fact that Chi-Chi told Vegeta that she was pregnant before she told Goku herself. They’d come to that conclusion on the long drive, and they both laughed about it, like normal people. 

Vegeta’s clingy, obsessive behavior was getting out of hand. And the fact that he was going to turn one day with her oldest friend into a poisonous, drunken rage and call his ex girlfriend to meet him, well... that was about as low of blow as Bulma could bear. 

At least Eighteen was above his games, and though Bulma didn’t condone the childish scene she just witnessed, she appreciated fact that Eighteen immediately called her. She was right. She wasn’t the bitch that Vegeta made her out to be. She was immature and reckless, as much as he was, but she could be trusted much further than Bulma originally gave her credit for. 

“What was your plan, to fuck her?”

“ _Tch_ … Been on that ride already. It no longer interests me.” Vegeta scoffed. 

“Why, because she turned you down tonight? Is that why you two were fighting?” 

He didn’t respond, just huffed loudly through his nostrils, as if the question was beneath him. 

“You got nothing to say now? You were full of words a minute ago. What’s the problem? You exhausted your mouth on your ex-girlfriend?”

He still said nothing, biting his bottom lip as he stared out the window. 

Kami, what she wouldn’t give to be able to crack open his skull and download his twisted mind onto a thumb drive. This insolent quiet act was getting old, and she wished more than anything for the ability to defrag his stupid mess of ill-conceived thoughts and reupload them to his head, clean and unfettered. Unfortunately, nothing about the human mind was so simple, and Vegeta’s mind was scrambled every which way, ten times fucked beyond a normal person’s. Still… she was committed to try. Besides maybe Goku, everyone else had given up.

“For your information, Vegeta, I was gone all day helping _you_ , not Goku!”

At that he turned to her and snapped, “Oh yeah? Helping me with what?”

“It’s in the center console.”

Her fingers gripped the steering wheel tighter. Her hands grew numb and her blood thumped against her temples as she watched Vegeta in her periphery open the console to extract the manila folder and set it in his lap. He flicked on the interior light and flipped the folder open. It seemed to take a second for him to register what he was looking at, but the moment it clicked she heard his breath catch in his throat, an audible hitch as his hand jumped to cover his own mouth. He stared at the pile before he dragged his fingers down his chin and picked up the top photograph by the corner, flicking it toward him to reveal the one beneath it, and the next and the next. 

“Where did you get these?” he asked. His voice quivered, and Bulma didn’t have to turn her head from the road to know that he was trying and failing to swallow his cries.

She tried to mask her previous anger at him, adopting a softer tone as she explained, “I tracked down your old neighbor from Saiya to find out what happened to your family. That’s who I was visiting today.” 

“Why?” She could hear the desperate fight in his cracked vocals, trying to punish emotions he deemed weak. The folder laid across his lap, and he was no longer looking at the photos, but at her with watery eyes, demanding an answer.

“Because… I don’t know. Because I thought that if I could find your family, or what happened to them, maybe it would help you.”

He didn’t respond to that. He looked back down at the photographs in his lap and continued to flip through them silently. Bulma took a breath, preparing herself to tell him the bit of news he probably already knew deep down was true.

“I’m sorry, Vegeta. Your mother didn’t make it.” 

He inhaled sharply, and barely a noise passed his lips as he exhaled. She questioned herself as to why she was telling him this now, while he was drunk. But he wasn’t ever not fucked up on something. And when he wasn’t, he was sick and in a worse mood. There would never be a good time to tell him.

“But… There’s good news. I found out that your brother is alive, and he’s here somewhere. I can find him!”

Vegeta snapped his head toward her. His face was still full of the same venom it held since she’d picked him up, but it seemed to tighten. His eyes narrowed further and his jaw clenched. She could hear his teeth grinding together. Without turning his face from her, he pressed the button to roll down his window and looked her in the eye as he extended his arm outside the car with the folder in his hand and let the photos flutter out behind them like highway garbage. 

“What the fuck! Vegeta! What did you do that for?”

Bulma immediately slammed on the breaks, and pulled the car to the side of the road. Those images were priceless. They were the only pieces of his mother he had left. Her heart lurched seeing them whip behind the car, carried in the wind. She knew he would regret throwing away the only photos he had of his mother. He was drunk, being stubborn and hateful because he was in a mood. Once again, she’d save him from himself. 

Bulma got out of the car and was about to trudge toward the ditch behind them. But Vegeta had gotten out too and was walking in the opposite direction. Before she could contend with the photos, she ran to catch up.

“What the hell is _wrong_ with you!? Where are you going?” Her voice hit a pained, pitchy tone she didn’t recognize. She grabbed his arm, but he whipped it away with a snarl. 

“I never asked for your help!” 

Bulma reached for his hand again. “I know that, asshole! I did it anyway because I love you!”

“Well, I didn’t ask for that either.” He spun around, pulling his hand away and crossed his arms to stare at her. She could practically see the heat lifting from his body. He was wound, coiled, ready to blast apart.

Twice in a single day, she’d said those words. The first time, albeit via text, he ignored her. Now, he threw the words back at her face. It stung to hear him so callously disregard them, spit on them like they were a burden, like she was holding him back from his twisted goal. It was one thing to ignore that she said it, to pretend he didn’t get the message, but another completely to use her declaration as a weapon, like he was purposefully trying to hurt her just to push her away. She couldn’t help but wonder if he was doing it because of what Goku said. If he was really planning on riding his vices to an early grave, perhaps that was the driving force behind his hateful remarks.

“You’re wasted. You don’t know what you’re saying. I can find your brother. Isn’t this what you’ve been searching for since the day you came to this country? You told me you were searching for them. For her, at least. If Tarble is out there, don’t you want to know him?”

He shook his head, back and forth, the pinch in his features tightening as she spoke. 

“Who the fuck are you talking about? Why are you doing this to me?” he asked, his voice breaking as he fought to maintain composure. But it was too late, he was bursting apart, acting as if she’d cut open every scar across his body. “I’m not some equation for you to solve, Bulma. Tracking down some stranger is not going to suddenly fix anything. Telling me you love me is not going to fix anything. Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want any of it? The only thing I want right now is to be left alone. I don’t need him. And I don’t need you either. Don’t fucking follow me.”

He stomped off down the road, leaving her to stand in the ditch and watch him go. 

***

Nappa heard the front door open, and briefly congratulated Raditz in his head for returning home before morning, for once in his sorry life. He stretched his limbs across the bed with a satisfying sigh as he closed his book and turned up the volume on the screen. He’d seen The Big Lebowski a hundred times, and it never lost its flavor. He laughed heartily until the commercials interrupted, always turned up louder than the film itself, and he muted the screen. It was then he realized he’d never heard Raditz come upstairs, nor was the animal in the kitchen, clanging around making macaroni or whatever concoction he usually did whenever he managed to stumble home before dawn. Nappa’s curiosity got the better of him, and he ventured out his door to the floor below. It was completely dark. Raditz wasn’t home, which meant, Kakarot? 

Nappa continued down the hall with a sinking gut, knowing that Kakarot would never drop in at this time of night. But a light glowed below his door. Maybe he’d gotten into a tiff with his woman, but that seemed out of character for the happy-go-lucky Son brother. 

Nappa knocked. When nobody responded, he opened the door to see Vegeta sprawled out on the carpet. The boy looked up lazily, a baggie of pills in his fist. 

“Sup Kid?”

“I’m tired.”

“I see that. You wanna tell me how many you took?”

“Not particularly,” Vegeta slurred and closed his eyes.

“Up! Come on!” Nappa moved to pull the punk from the floor. Whatever he’d swallowed, he’d force them back out of him. If Kid refused, they’d take a trip to the ER to have his stomach pumped. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Vegeta cussed and moaned as Nappa dragged him by the arm into the bathroom, jerking him down to face the toilet. 

“Don’t make me stick my own fingers down your throat. You know I’m good for it.” he said.

Vegeta sneered over his shoulder before he put his pointer and middle finger in his mouth, shoved them deep into his throat to force the pills back up into the bowl.

Nappa stood over him, watching his back heave as he emptied his gut, waiting until his bile ran dry, and he was sure there was nothing left in the boy’s stomach. 

“You’re such a pain in the ass,” Nappa growled as he flushed down the absurd amount of pills and alcohol or whatever else Vegeta decided to swallow in a moment of stupid drama.

“Come on,” he said, picking him up by the elbow. He dragged Vegeta into the kitchen and pulled a can of Red Bull and bottle of Gatorade from the fridge. “Drink this first,” he said shoving the energy drink into the kid’s fists before he towed him toward the stairs. 

“I want a cigarette,” Kid whined. 

“Of course you do.” Nappa rolled his eyes, pulling harder, cinching his arms around him as Vegeta tried to dart toward the front door. “Nope! You’ve lost your privilege in this house. You’re comin’ with me or you’re out on the street.”

“I’ll take the street,” Vegeta muttered, though Nappa knew he didn’t mean it. As long as he got his stupid smoke, he’d shut the fuck up and maybe calm down. 

Nappa locked his bedroom door and opened the window. 

“You wanna smoke, be my fucking guest. Drink that!” He gestured to the Red Bull the kid had yet to pop open as he glared at Nappa from the doorway.

“Kid, your teeth are gonna rot out of your head if you keep this shit up. Fucking smoke if that’s what you want. I ain’t stopping ya!”

Vegeta stumbled slowly toward the open window and sat himself on the sill, pulling out a cigarette from his hoodie. He lazily pressed it between his lips.

“Before you light that, drink! Don’t make me ask you again.” 

Vegeta snapped open the energy drink and put it to his lips, glaring at Nappa over the can as he tipped the beverage down his throat. 

“Keep going,” he directed, watching the brat guzzle twelve ounces of Red Bull until the can ran dry. Immediately he popped the cigarette back between his teeth and leaned toward the open window to huff into the open air. It was quiet for a moment, and Nappa almost unmuted the TV, sensing Vegeta was going to sulk in silence. He was surprised to hear his scratchy voice break the air.

“You ever been to the top of the Pendulum Building?” Vegeta asked.

“No.” As far as Nappa knew, the behemoth hundred and twenty story skyscraper in North didn’t host an observatory, but since the punk was bringing it up, he’d bite. “I take it you have?”

“A few times. It’s crazy. You can never see stars in North. Too many lights, they get drowned out. But when I was that high up, on acid the last time, and leaning over the rails, it was easy to forget which way was up or down. With the city lights, it was like there were stars in every direction.”

What the fuck? That was some drug-addled nonsense if Nappa’d ever hear it. 

“Kid, are you talking about jumping off of buildings?”

“I’m not.”

“What the hell are you trying to say?”

“No idea, Nappa. Just saying what I feel.”

“Well... you sound like a crazy dipshit with a death wish. Tell me that you don’t imagine that, Vegeta.”

“I don’t imagine anything.”

The longer Nappa watched him, the more torn up he felt about him. Vegeta was his responsibility, and he left him alone with those sick fucks at fifteen. He didn’t know what monsters they were at the time, and Vegeta was too proud to say anything to ever clue Nappa in to what was happening to him. He should have been the most enlightened mother fucker at that press conference, and he felt guilty about being blindsided by the insinuations that surfaced, devastated that he hadn’t picked up on it himself. But at the same time, Kid never said anything! He didn’t speak up, and Nappa for the life of him couldn’t understand why Vegeta would allow himself to be their prey for all those years. It was kind of unbelievable in a way, but at the same time it wasn’t. Maybe Vegeta’s confident, asshole aire was just a front to cover up his vulnerability. Maybe he was still the abandoned little child he’d met at the age of seven, and he’d never evolved past the scared little immigrant boy from Saiya that fronted tough. It was all an act. Vegeta was a brilliant actor. He’d been acting the moment he stepped foot in North City.

“Vegeta, I’m sorry. I wish you’d told–”

“Shut the fuck up. I don’t want to talk about it. Not ever.”

“Fine!” He backed off the subject, sensing he was going to cause more damage than progress by bringing it up. “Where’s Bulma?” 

“We broke up. She was getting too attached.”

“Boy, if that isn’t the most fucked up thing you’ve ever said. And you’ve said some crazy shit.” 

Nappa tried to wrap his mind around Vegeta’s warped logic for pushing away the one person that actually put up with his nonsense. That he broke up with Briefs because she actually cared about him was just too fucking Vegeta. Nappa couldn’t help but laugh. 

Vegeta cast an annoyed glare at him before he lit another cigarette.

“Kid, if you need a place to crash, I’m here for ya. But there’s none of that shit in this house. You wanna stay here, no pills, no drugs, you come with me to the shop; you sleep here, not alone in Kakarot’s bedroom. You got it?

“It’s three fucking days, Vegeta. Once we hit the road, I ain’t taking care of ya anymore. You’re on your own. I know I’ve threatened ya before, and you probably think I’m gonna back down when you really need me. But believe me motherfucker, I’m done. When we get back, you’re out on your ass. You find another sugar mama, or you _hopefully_ get some fucking help. Cause I’m fucking sick and tired of you draggin’ me down and blaming me for shit I wasn’t even around for.”

“Maybe if you’d been around–”

“Fuck you Vegeta. I never asked for this! I took care of you out of my own heart. And you should have told me if–”

The moment he said it, he wished he could take it back. It wasn’t Vegeta’s fault he’d left.

“I’m fucking sorry, Kid. Okay? I don’t know what else to tell you besides the fact that you’re being an idiot if you think anything better than Bulma fucking Briefs is coming your way. You manage to make a girl like that give a flying fuck about you, and you throw it away?”

“I’m just tired.” He stared blankly out the open window at the yard below, like he was disappointed it wasn’t further from the ground. He flicked the cigarette from between his fingers in a streak of orange sparks that died as they hit the dewey grass below. Vegeta watched them fade before he stood and trudged across the room to climb into the bed. He didn’t even bother to remove his shoes, and before Nappa could protest, he’d burrowed under the covers and pulled the blankets over his head, shutting himself off to the world. 

***

He stared at the mound of blankets next to him, stomach flipping in loops as they began to stir. Chi-Chi had already gone to bed before he’d arrived home from his day-long excursion and was still dead asleep when he’d awakened with the sunrise. She’d had a full day of meetings with new clients and a concert to attend, on top of being pregnant, which sapped her energy more than usual. Goku tried not to move a muscle to disturb her, but it was hard. His heart beat against his ears, and he could hear its thumping against the pillow. _Wake up!_

The body beneath the blankets flipped toward him, and she pulled them down from her head, her eyes heavily leadened in a groggy stupor. 

“What time is it?” she croaked.

Goku shrugged. “It’s mornin’” He reached a hand to her face, tucking back the silky strands of hair that had fallen over it. “Do ya want some breakfast? I can cook a mean pancake.”

“You’re a pancake,” she mumbled. “Mixing batter with eggs and oil isn’t technically cooking.” She yawned, stretching her limbs before she turned to him with an impish grin. “But yes, Mr. Bisquick, I’d love some of your famous flapjacks if you promise to put some chocolate chips in them.”

She scooted closer to nuzzle her head beneath his chin, the coconut scent of her shampoo sending his mind to tailspin and lose all good sense, like the smell of her alone had eroded every carefully plotted word he’d spent the last twelve hours refining and repeating, trying not to fuck up for once. But it was hopeless. Goku was never going to be the most eloquent man on Kami’s green Earth. Chi-Chi wouldn’t care, he knew, but he still wanted the moment to be perfect. 

Perhaps he should listen to Bulma. Most of the ride home, she’d been saying he was overthinking it. Real girls, Bulma said, didn’t care about it being perfect. That was all Hollywood propaganda. Real girls just wanted it to be meant with honest intention, unfiltered and frilless, even if that meant popping the question while she was half asleep on a Sunday morning.

“Was Bulma’s secret errand successful?”

“More or less,” Goku said. He rubbed her back as she burrowed her face into his chest. “Chi…”

“Mmm?”

“I uh… I have to explain somethin’ to ya. About yesterday.”

Chi-Chi lifted her head to squint at him, her brows knitted as if she half expected Goku to admit to doing something idiotic. Wouldn’t be the first time. “If this is about Vegeta, Goku… I swear to Kami…”

“No! ‘Course not!” Jeez, he knew he was overly concerned about him lately, but he didn’t think it was unwarranted, given the circumstances. He knew it bothered Chi-Chi that he spent so much time researching, trying to diagnose his friend’s condition and find ways to confront it. But they had months for baby planning. He’d take her gripes with a grain of salt, pesky hormones and all. 

“Listen…” He sat up to lean over her, brushing his knuckles over her cheek. “I… I went to see your father yesterday.”

“You what!” Her sleepy eyes suddenly shot open, like sniffing salts, and they nearly knocked foreheads as she lurched herself up from the pillows. She looked more guilty and frightened than angry, and Goku smiled wide seeing her in that position. She deserved a little bit of torment for lying to him. “Goku… I… Why would–” she stuttered dumbly, perfectly distracted as he pulled the ring from his pocket and held it between them.

“What the fuck is that?”

“It was your mother’s. Your dad gave it to me.”

“Goku… I…”

“You don’t gotta say nothin’ but yes.”

She couldn’t say or do anything but cover her mouth and nod frantically before she launched herself at him, arms wound around his neck. 

***

Nappa kicked the stopper down to hold the front door open and helped her lug Vegeta’s guitars into the shop. 

“Kami, Briefs. You ever think about cleaning this thing? I’ve seen tidier dumpsters,” he joked and grabbed Vegeta’s duffle from the garbage strewn backseat.

“Ha ha. Very funny.” Bulma locked her fancy trash can and followed him into the shop. “He still here?”

“So far, so good. I didn’t tell him you were coming.” Nappa tossed Vegeta’s bag behind the counter and turned, crossing his arms and staring down at her with a smug all-knowingness as he said, “Told you Mission Mommy was a bad idea.”

“It wasn’t a total failure. He just needs some time.”

“So, you’re still going after the brother?”

“You got a better idea? Seems like the tough love route never worked out too well for you. He knows how to survive on the street, Nappa. Besides, he’s famous. Someone else will buddy right up to him and feed his habit.”

Nappa nodded slowly in agreement, dropping his gaze to stare unfocused into the empty air. “Well, you’re a better person than I am.”

Kami, first Goku, and now Nappa was taking the blame for Vegeta’s self-destruction? It seemed that everyone he met, he took a slice of their soul and bite of their sanity. None of it was in their control; they had to know that.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, big guy. You did the best you could.”

“But I left him with them,” he muttered to the floor; his tone quiet and full of remorse.

Bulma furrowed her brows. “With who?”

“Nothing. Nevermind,” he said, snapping out of his pity party. He jerked his head toward the office. “Just make it quick alright? I’m trying to close up shop.”

She opened the door, and Vegeta startled, dropping the screwdriver in his hand to roll across the floor. He stared up at her for a moment, eyes wide. But he quickly turned away to pick up the tool before it rolled out of reach from where he sat at the table in the middle of the room. It was the same spot where he’d kissed her in September. The memory was oddly sweet and far away, like it had been a dream from a different timeline. He was sober then.

The table where he sat was covered in guitar pedals that’d been torn apart, their pieces carefully laid out in patterns of chips and wires and hardwares. Nappa said he’d put him to work, and it was the kind of thing he should be doing… organizing, taking broken things apart and putting them back together, fixing something for once.

She crossed the room, ignoring his stiffened posture as she sat herself on the bench beside him. He held the screwdriver in his lap and twirled it between his fingers, refusing to look at her.

“I know you don’t want to talk to me. Whatever skewed reality you’re living in prohibits honest human interaction.” 

His eyes darted sideways for a second, as if he knew he should feel insulted but thought better of it. Instead, he turned his focus back to the screwdriver he spun in slow circles between his fingers, lips pressed shut.

“Don’t worry. I’m not here to argue. I won’t even make you say anything. Just listen.” 

He tucked his bottom lip between his teeth, playing with his lip ring, but he sat there without storming off, which only meant he wanted to hear her, or was curious at the very least to know what she had to say.

“I know what you’re doing and why you’re pushing me away. It’s nothing to do with your brother or your mother or even me. It’s you. You’ve convinced yourself for so long that you aren’t good enough for this world that you’re willing to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy just to prove yourself right. I want you to stop.”

She waited a breath, hoping he’d interject even with a snide remark, but he said nothing, just kept twirling an imaginary screw into the tip of his finger.

“I know you’re trying to tell yourself that I was just another flash in the pan. And you know I’m not. That’s what’s hard for you. You think you don’t deserve me–”

“Don’t flatter yourself!” He snapped, finally turning toward her.

“Then what?”

“I don’t need anybody.”

“Everyone does! Vegeta, that doesn’t make you weak, it makes you human.”

“I don’t want anybody.”

“Then I guess you’re a stronger person than me, because I need you. And you’re a fucking asshole if you think I should just stand by while you dig your own hole and cover yourself in dirt.”

“Walk away, if that’s what you’re worried about. I never forced you to watch.”

“No, you’re right. You never forced me to do anything. I love you out of my own fucking free will, and that’s all I came here to say. You’re fucking high as a kite right now, and Nappa is too dense to tell the difference, but I can tell. And I love you anyway. Unconditional, Vegeta. I know you don’t have much experience in that, but it means you can say the most horrible things to me right now to try and push me away, and they won’t work because I know you’re fucking lying to yourself and to me.”

She pulled a phone from her bag and slid it toward him. 

“You blocked my number like a coward, so I got you a new phone. Do what you want with it. Never turn it on, throw it out the window, whatever you want. But I’m going to text you on this thing every fucking day you’re gone. Regardless of whether you answer or not, I’ll be here when you come home.”

She stood to leave, and it took every fiber of her being to walk out the doors without looking back. He would come back, she told herself.

Vegeta’s murky thoughts swirled in loops inside his skull as he sat there staring at the device. In the moment he felt more numb than anything. She could have screamed at him, rather than spoke calmly, rationally the way she did, and he’d have had the same reaction. Too high to conjure an argument or to give in and run to her, instead he ingested her message and let his overactive defense pummel it into a fine powder he could brush from the table, same as the remnants of his pills. It was too much to be _loved_ , whatever that meant, if it really meant anything at all. Feeling like he was under somebody’s watch, like he was being set up to fail, when she knew he’d fail. She’d thrown the phrase around the past two days like it would get his attention. It did, but it only tightened the vice grip on his sanity. Convincing herself that she loved him was only going to make the implosion of their relationship that much more difficult when it inevitably caved in. It was a stupid, childish phrase meant to gain the upper hand over the unwitting fool that believed it. Perhaps she believed it. But that only made her the fool.

He flipped open the device and turned it on. Already a text sat unread in his inbox from _Soul Mate_.” Vegeta rolled his eyes. Kami, even when she was mad, she was still the most stubborn and ridiculous person. Why she tethered herself to a failure like him was a mystery. 

He opened it to read the waiting message: _I love you this very second. And everytime you read this it will still be true._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh... So much cheese at the end. I kind of hate it, but I'm pretty damn certain that CFTT Bulma is a cheesy person. What is the emo era if not broody, melodramatic hate mixed with cheesy, melodramatic love? Besides, how else can she convince herself to stick with such hot mess of a boyfriend if not believe in some bad, poetic corn delivered via SMS for 15 cents?


	26. Best Friends Means

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the beta read [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) and [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan).
> 
> "There's no I in Team" was the soundtrack for this chapter.

They’d only been on the road for two and a half weeks, and already, it was immeasurably harder than Goku ever imagined. Not that he was naive enough to think cramming four conflicting personalities into a van for six to eight hours a day was going to be a cakewalk. He still never thought it would be _this_ difficult. There wasn’t a moment when someone wasn’t threatening murder. 

“Why the fuck are we stopping? We’re only an hour out. You can’t hold it?”

“Two fucking seconds, Nappa. Unless you’d prefer I piss all over the carpet.”

The big man muttered something in Saiygo from the backseat as Vegeta pulled off the highway. Raditz answered from two benches back, and whatever their exchange was caused Vegeta to spin around from the driver’s seat and start spouting off a string of Saiygo curses. 

Goku wasn’t about to sit around and listen to their foreign gripes for the tenth time that day, and hopped out to peruse the store for snacks. 

Three months was going to be impossible at this rate. Every day was the same, but growing progressively worse. They’d wake up early at some cheap hotel. He and Vegeta always shared a room because the other two couldn’t stand him, but most nights, Goku was rooming alone. 

Bulma had asked Goku to watch out for him, and he was doing his best and would have without her prompting, but he couldn’t physically watch him unless he was high himself. Vegeta was awake until the wee hours of the morning. When he was actually at the hotel, he was outside chain smoking, drinking, putting lines up his face. And when he wasn’t… Goku preferred not to think about what he was up to.

They’d clamor into the van around sunrise most days, and Goku usually took the first shift at the wheel while the others slept. It was the only sleep Vegeta was getting, and it wasn’t nearly enough. A few hours in, he’d wake up and want to drive. He drove like a maniac, like he was in some Formula One race chasing his next high in a a fifteen passenger van and trailer, cursing and whipping the thing around everyone that got in his way, even if they were already going ninety miles per hour.

Inevitably, he’d stop off at gas station or truck stop to snort pills, which only amped up his psycho energy. That’s when the arguing would start. It wasn’t all Vegeta’s fault, granted. Nappa was egging him on, always chastising him in English first before Goku would tell him to lay off, and Nappa would for about ten minutes before he started harping on him in their native tongue. 

They’d arrive at the venues late afternoon to load in and sound check. What made it worse was that everywhere they went, it felt like they were following on Icejin’s heels. Their tour was routed to the same venues a day or two after the other band, and seeing their posters in every venue seemed to set Vegeta on edge, especially considering they still used promo with his pictures in some of them. And in the others, their new stuff, they wore creepy, ghoulish masks with chrome horns. They looked like something from a nightmare, a nightmare that Vegeta lived whether he’d admit it or not. And Goku couldn’t help but feel like their phantom presence had something to do with his friend’s heightened anxiety. If being forced to look at the images wasn’t bad enough, some venue employee would inevitably bring up the fact that his former band had just swept through town and set him off.

After soundcheck, the lull set in, which was perhaps the most dangerous part of the day where Vegeta was concerned. After being cooped up in the van with hours to spare, he was itching to let loose, and could sometimes clear an entire bottle of booze before they went onstage at nine or ten. It was hard to even tell he was drunk because the shit he snorted covered up the symptoms, so as long as he stayed high, he stayed weirdly coherent. Sometimes it made Goku forget how dire the situation really was.

The shows were popping off without a hitch. For forty-five minutes every night, they managed to pretend to get along. They maybe didn’t have the same chemistry they’d had at the release show, but they were still selling out every concert. They played halfway decently, and the only pain in the ass was trading shifts at the merch booth. With Bulma’s last minute drop, they had to wait until Krillin could join up when they swung back down south, and in the meantime, the band members themselves were forced to take turns slinging t-shirts—a job in which Vegeta, of course, refused to participate. Sure, he liked having fans; he just preferred they admire him from the mosh pit, separated by metal barricades.

After the shows, he’d disappear for hours and show up at the hotel near dawn, calling Goku’s phone on repeat until he picked up to let him stumble inside reeking of booze and cigarettes. The alcohol finally catching up with him, Goku would have to help him into the shower before they crashed for a few hours, and the wake-up call reset them to do it all over again. Except for almost the past week, Vegeta didn’t even make it back to the hotel, and they’d be forced to track him down at some random address after calling his phone repeatedly. Vegeta would stagger into the van half drunk, looking like death incarnate. It was only a matter of time before he ran himself into the ground.

The bell above the door dinged as Goku exited the shop and made his way back to the van with a bag full of candy, chips and soda.

The others were at the back with the doors splayed open, shouting at one another in Saiygo. Vegeta’s legendary temper was in full swing, a snarl grafted on his face as he frantically tore their luggage apart. Raditz stood off to the side smoking a cigarette, shaking his head, laughing darkly.

“What are they saying?”

“He thinks Nappa took his stash. Fucking junkie probably left it at the last chick or dude, who the fuck know’s apartment. He wants us to turn around or he says he’s not playing.”

“He what? We can’t turn around! Load in is at three! It’s one-thirty!”

“Of course we aren’t going back, moron.” Raditz pulled Goku’s grocery bag open with a finger and helped himself to a bag of chips.

“Knock it off, Rad! Buy your own!”

“Don’t be a little bitch, Kakarot.” Raditz turned back to Nappa and Vegeta and shouted something in Saiygo. Whatever it was earned him a questioning remark from Vegeta, which Raditz answered with a word or two that quickly shut him up. 

“What did you say?” 

Goku never felt less like a Saiyan than when the three of them would get into shouting matches in their mother tongue, one he’d never had the chance to learn. But at the same time, he was glad he didn’t have to hear the hateful things they had to tell each other. Still, he wanted to know some aspects—like what the hell did Raditz just say to get Vegeta to do a one-eighty and calm down.

“Nothin’. Don’t worry about it, brah. I have it under control,” he grinned and opened the chips, tossing the cigarette to the curb before he climbed back into the van. 

“Vegeta! What do you think you’re doing?” Nappa snapped as he opened the driver’s door. “You’re not fucking driving!”

“Eat a dick old man. I hope you choke on it.”

Nappa reeled, he looked like he was about to pop Vegeta in the face, but found the wherewithal to climb into the back bench and use his words instead. “Kid, I fucking swear to god. I’m so done with you. When we get home, I don’t want to hear your fucking name again. You find yourself another drummer. You’re fucking dead to me.”

“Good fucking riddance to you too, fat ass.”

“Every fucking time! You’re the most ungrateful little piece of shit!”

“Guys, can we just shut up and go?” Goku whined, but the two wouldn’t let up. Nappa was all the way in the back behind Raditz, and they didn’t even have the decency to duke it out in Saiygo. 

Raditz leaned in from the first bench between the center console and welcomed himself to Goku’s soda. 

“Raditz! Give it back!” 

His brother just laughed as he started to chug it. 

Goku had never felt this close to losing his shit before. He had to get out. Just as Vegeta turned the key in the ignition, he opened the passenger door and strode back toward the gas station. 

“Kakarot! Get the fuck back here! We’re leaving!”

Vegeta started to hammer his fist against the horn, which only made the battering ram of Goku’s pulse beat harder against his temples. He was going to break something if he didn’t have a fucking moment to collect himself. He took his time inside the little shop to pick out another soda and pay for it, trying his best to ignore the obnoxious horn honking that seeped into the store. Before he exited through the dinging doors again, he pulled the baggie of pills from his pocket and lobbed them into the trash. 

***

The van door slid open, and Vegeta sat up from the bench where he’d been failing to sleep to see Raditz framed in the doorway with a cute, little blonde in front of him. Her heavy lined eyes rounded as she took him in. 

“Hi,” she said climbing inside. 

Vegeta pushed himself upright, his back pressed against the back wall as the girl sat herself onto the bench, practically between his legs. Her glossy pink lips curved into a smile. 

“I’m Cat,” she said, extending a hand. Her nail polish was chipped away, like Bulma’s always was, and dozens of colorful rubber bracelets circled her wrist. 

Vegeta took it, clearing the gunk from his throat. “Vegeta,” he muttered.

“I know.” She glanced away, lowering her eyelashes to stare at his hand in hers with a demure smile. “I’ve kind of had a crush on you since junior high when my sister showed me the ‘Rumble’ music video.”

Vegeta rolled his eyes. That video would haunt him to the end of his days. He didn’t know why he’d let them dress him up like a teenage Rambo.

“You’re welcome, asshole,” Raditz grunted as he maneuvered himself into the bench behind them, looking more peevish than usual. “Said I’d find you something.”

Cat rested her arm on Vegeta’s knee as she pulled a weed grinder from her pocket and unscrewed the bottom. “You got something I can put this on?”

Raditz extended Nappa’s book over the backseat. The girl moved to sit cross legged on the bench with the book in her lap. She tapped out whatever powder she’d ground up.

“What is it?” Vegeta asked.

“I’m not really sure to be honest. Kind of a mixture. Vics, Percs, some Ritalin.”

Vegeta watched her tap out a mound of whitish blue powder onto the book’s hard surface in her lap, meticulously cutting lines with a Blockbuster video card. She had tattoos on her forearms that stopped halfway up, and Vegeta couldn't help but notice the track marks on the inside of her elbows. 

She looked up at him and grinned, two deep dimples set below the apples of her cheeks. “Do you have a bill?”

Nodding, Vegeta dug in his pocket to extract a rumpled zeni. 

She flattened it against his his knee before rolling a straw that she handed back to him and held up the book. Vegeta snorted a line, relishing in the metallic burn that filled his nostril and dripped down the back of his throat. Fuck, whatever it was, was good. He traded the bill for the book, holding it for her to take her own dive before they passed it back to Raditz. 

“Cat, let's go back inside,” Raditz said after he’d had his fill. 

“Are you coming in?” She hadn’t torn her big eyes from him, and Vegeta didn’t want to go inside the venue, but he also didn’t want her to leave. In an odd way, she reminded him of Bulma, and as her leg curled around his, he felt his pulse lift a beat. 

“Not until I have to,” he told her. 

“Cat!” Raditz barked. He pulled at her elbow as he climbed out of the van. 

There was something about the dimples set into her cheeks that made his stomach knot, and he felt like he’d lost something as she hopped out of the van to follow Raditz into the venue, looking over her shoulder with a sprightly smile.

“Come find me if you want more.”

Vegeta was left alone, but better off than he was a minute ago. Whatever the girl had given him was quickly latching onto the broken parts of his brain and smoothing out the cracks. By the time she left, he felt close to normal, enough to leave the van and pace around the backlot with a smoke and a handle of whiskey. 

His second phone vibrated, and he was in a decent enough mood to read her message. Bulma sent somewhere between five and ten each day, mostly nonsense drivel about her life, what she was up to, the kinds of mundane texts he imagined Kakarot was receiving from his own beau. 

Most of the time, he shut the phone off and only turned it on when he was feeling particularly lonely, which was more often than he anticipated. Reading her messages, as much as he didn’t want to admit, filled the empty gaps, reattached him vaguely to a reality that was slipping away. Every stupid detail about the cat sleeping on his clothes, or her mother’s baked Brie that went uneaten without him, or her father’s nincompoop assistant that almost exploded the place kept him tethered to Bulma’s world. She was clever enough to never utter the kinds of words she’d imprinted on the phone to begin with, and kept their one-sided communication to surface level day-to-day happenings at the Capsule compound. It was like she knew that by doing so, he’d scroll back to that first message and read it over and over again, that the way she’d phrased it would be enough to remind him without being repeatedly hit over the head that she was still there. 

_'I cleaned out my goddamned car. Not a single gummy bear survived the assault'_ , she said.

He couldn’t help the upward turn of his lips. It was selfish, letting her carry on this way, but it was her choice. He had to keep reminding himself of the fact, or the guilt would hollow out whatever crumbs were left of his eroded soul. Bulma Briefs made her own damned decisions. Resisting the impulse to engage her was all he could do to maintain some semblance of conscience.

After stomping out his third, maybe fourth cigarette, Vegeta was about to push his way inside the venue when Cat reappeared in the parking lot.

“Raditz has to watch the merch booth,” she said. “You wanna re-up?”

He most certainly did. They climbed back into the van. Nappa’s novel still sat where they’d left it, and the girl tapped out another heap of power onto the cover. 

“This is so weird,” she said.

“What’s weird?”

“I saw Icejin play last night, and now I’m seeing you. I just remember how I was so jealous when I was fucking twelve of a girl holding your hand in a music video, and now I’m sitting here in front of you. I bet you get that star struck thing a lot.”

“Kind of,” he answered. He did get it a lot, but there was something different about the way she delivered. She wasn’t desperate or crying for one thing. She was chill. She was also feeding him for free. And something about her fucking cutesie dimples and the fact that Raditz was clamoring after her head over heels ignited the competitive side of him. He took the line she gave him and watched her take her own before he made a move. He did the math. If she was twelve when ‘Rumble’ was released, she was at least eighteen now.

The moment her head lifted from the book, his hand dove to meet her cheek and he pulled her lips to his. She didn’t move at first, perhaps a delayed shock, and he wondered if he’d gravely miscalculated her intentions, but after a long withheld breath, she parted her lips and slipped her fingers around the back of his neck. Their tongues had barely brushed together when the door opened with a woosh and a stale, “Hi Vegeta,” rang in his ears.

“We’re on now,” Kakarot said, a little too calmly for what he’d just witnessed. Or maybe not, it was hard to tell. As much as he played the idiot card, Kakarot had to have known that Vegeta wasn’t out baking cookies at four in the morning most nights.

“Fine,” he said, pushing past the girl to hop from the vehicle and land in front of him, face to face. Kakarot ground his teeth, but didn’t push his luck. He turned to march back to the venue, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Vegeta was following.

It was the worst show they’d played to date, like none of them were in synch or even half-heartedly into the performance. Not that the fans in this town would notice, but the band all knew it. Kakarot had lost all his charm and wit and banter, just plowing into one song after the next without any of his usual fanfare. He left little space for them to breathe, and acted as if he didn’t care. 

It wasn’t the first time Vegeta refused to soundcheck, but it was the first time Kakarot hadn’t covered for him, and both his guitar and vocals were far too quiet to his liking. Not that he could complain without getting reamed out by the man. Kakarot, Vegeta was discovering, could be a little bitch when pushed far enough. He’d have applauded him for his sheer audacity if he wasn’t so pissed off that it meant they sounded like shit. 

Vegeta was seething by the end of it, and stormed off the stage without packing up his pedals. He didn’t even bother to remove the guitar from his shoulders, and yanked the cord, pushing the instrument over his back as he darted offstage. 

“Come with me,” he said to the girl, and roughly grabbed her by the elbow. Dragging her into the nearest backstage bathroom, he shut them inside. 

She seemed a little frightened at first. The saccade of her rounded eyes flitted across his face before she dumped out a pile onto the edge of the sink. She cut it quickly, wordlessly, and pulled the rolled bill from her pocket to hold between her fingers. 

Vegeta grabbed it up and snorted the fat line she’d set and handed it off. The girl took her own, before she looked back to him with the same disconcerted expression.

“Are you okay?” Cat asked.

“I can’t even pretend to know what that means,” he said, trying jokingly to brush it off, but his face was breaking under the pressure. His brows, his lips, he was pretty sure his entire face twisted as he turned it away from the girl to face the tiled wall and close his eyes. He was crumbling in front of a fangirl in a backstage bathroom. There wasn’t any worse humiliation. 

“You can tell me.”

For a moment with his eyes closed, he could imagine she was Bulma. But she wasn’t, and he knew it. He almost welcomed the rap against the door and Kakarot’s recognizable voice asking him to come out and leave with him. But he hesitated, unwilling to hear the lecture the man was sure to lay on him for his previous infidelities. In the past two weeks he’d indulged in so many meaningless encounters, he felt like an empty casing, a bullet that sparked for a moment, ruined anything he came in contact with, and was left as a fragment to be kicked from the floor. He hardly knew himself or what he wanted. He could only close his eyes and press his forehead against the cold, tiled wall and pretend he didn’t exist for a minute. 

“Vegeta, come out,” Kakarot’s muffled voice pleaded from the other side.

Cat opened the door before Vegeta could shout at her to stop, and he felt Kakarot’s arms wrapping around his neck to pull him out of the bathroom, dragging him in a stupor through the short hall and out the backdoor. 

At first, he wasn’t going to fight him, but his head seemed to sober enough once they made it outside into the cool air, and Vegeta couldn’t help himself but buck against his grip. 

“Let me go!”

“I won’t.” Kakarot’s arms cinched tighter around his neck, and the guitar dug into his back. “Come with me, please!… For one night, don’t leave.”

Vegeta struggled against him, pulling at Kakarot’s thick arms before he gave up and began elbowing him as hard as he could against his ribs. He didn’t know why he was doing it, but a desperate impulse beat him over the head, and he couldn’t stop himself. His arms around his neck made him feel like he was choking when he knew he wasn’t. Over and over, the hard point of his elbow landed against Kakarot’s ribs, and his foot stomped down on his toes. Finally, his grip loosened just enough for Vegeta to twist away. He spun around, his fist wound back. But Kakarot was a little quicker, and a mean right hook landed against Vegeta’s temple before everything went black.

***

Vegeta heard the ignition turn in the van and felt the bench vibrate beneath him. His eyes opened to see two Kakarots shift back into nearly one, a fuzzy one. Fucking asshole. He set his palm against his throbbing head as if to steady it as he sat upright. 

“You knocked me out?”

“You were gonna do the same to me!” he whined, turning in the seat to glare at him. He’d never seen the puppy bare his teeth before. It was an odd look on him with brows pulled down, his big eyes narrowed into a mean scowl. “If you’da come willingly I wouldn’ta hit you.”

“Are you really this desperate to spoon me?”

“If it’ll keep ya from doing stuff you’ll regret, then yeah!”

“Waste of time, Kakarot,” Nappa muttered as he maneuvered the van from the back alley behind the club out onto the busy street. 

Vegeta glanced around the van. “Where’s Raditz?”

“With that broad you were trying to bang,” Nappa said. “Fucking have to find his ass in the morning. Need to get some fucking leashes for you two.”

Great… now that girl was permanently spoiled, and Raditz would be only too glad to rub it in. 

They pulled into a hotel parking lot on the outskirts of the city, right off the freeway. They were always cheapest outside of town. The lights were burnt out on half the letters on the hotel’s marquee. Kakarot opened the side door, and Vegeta scooted himself to the edge of the seat, unsure whether he’d topple over or not if he tried to stand. His head was swimming, and his vision was still a little frayed. He steadied himself on Kakarot’s shoulder and hopped to the pavement. 

“I think you gave me a concussion.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and helped him inside. 

With Raditz gone, the three shared a room. He felt tired and woozy, and maybe Kakarot was right. He hadn’t slept for more than two or three hours a day for almost three weeks. Even so, he couldn’t will his eyes to close, and stared blankly at the TV. They’d ordered pizza, and Vegeta didn’t realize how hungry he actually was until he smelled it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Maybe it was yesterday, but probably the day before. He inhaled half of a pie until he felt sick and laid fetally, completely still, trying to quell the urge to vomit. 

Eventually he fell asleep, and though he’d die before he’d ever admit it, the big dope’s weight on top of him was what pushed him over the edge, like a baby being swaddled. He didn’t even hear the alarm. Kakarot shook him awake to zombie crawl back to the van and pass out on the first bench. 

It was raining by the time they’d pulled up to some random address to pick up Raditz and head out of town. Vegeta was half asleep, listening to them argue about Raditz bringing the damned girl with them to the next show, but he wasn’t in the mood to throw his two cents into the debate, much less open his eyes. If he had been in the mood, he’d have sided with Raditz anyway, so long as the girl kept supplying. He felt cold and sick, and the rain wasn’t helping any.

Sleep attempts were short and restless. Almost the whole way to the next venue, he slipped in and out of consciousness before he finally woke up alone. He kept his eyes closed as he listened to the muffled voices outside the vehicle. Vegeta groggily sat up, trying to tune his ear to the quiet debate outside the van’s doors. 

“Don’t fucking tell him!” he heard Nappa warn. 

“Tell me what?” Vegeta slid the van door open to stare between his three bandmates who looked guiltily back and forth at one another. 

“Zarbon was arrested here last night,” Kakarot said. “You don’t have to guess why.”

No, he didn’t… Vegeta meant to laugh; he wanted to, but it spurt from his lips in an odd, broken sob. And once it was out, vocalized in front of his band mates, he couldn’t wrangle the noise back in. It folded over on itself like he was choking on it, and it didn’t help that Kakarot came to his aide, unwarranted. That only made it worse. He couldn’t breathe. This was good news for once, yet he couldn’t figure out how to use his lungs properly to show it. He could only bury his face in Kakarot’s shoulder and wait it out until his tired body found a way to turn the joy that he was feeling into sounds that made more sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little build up before the next chapter, which is kind of intense.
> 
> Anyways... KV is my 2nd favorite ship, if that wasn't obvious.


	27. Gun to My Head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really long chapter with a slight trigger warning. 
> 
> Thanks for the beta read [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) and [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan).

“Send titty pics.”

Goddammit, this teenager was grating on her last damn nerve. She’d tracked down the only person named Tarble that fit the age parameters with a simple online search, and after seeing his photo in the Shenron Academy online newsletter, there was no doubt left in her mind that this little prick was Vegeta’s brother. The smirking photo of the prestigious school’s varsity soccer captain made that clear in no uncertain terms. They were practically twins. 

Thankfully, she had some friends left at her rival high school, and she’d managed to get his AIM screen name from the younger sibling of an old classmate. Tarble even friended her back quite quickly, but for the last week, Mr. SoccerStud9001 was nothing but snark. He kept asking her to send nudes and shirked her questions, as if he didn’t believe she was who she said she was. After nearly a week of this bullshit, she’d given up and decided to surprise the punk in person.

Bulma pulled up to the academy an hour after classes let out when she was certain he’d be there for practice. Sure enough, the soccer field was littered with boys in white uniforms with green lettering splayed across their backs. She sat in the bleachers, watching the small team captain with the flame of black hair dart and dodge the defensive lines, taking the ball downfield for an assisted goal. 

She was tempted to text Vegeta. Usually by this time of day, she’d have sent close to a dozen unanswered messages, but for a reason she couldn’t define, she had yet to type one. Every time her thumbs hovered over the buttons, they froze like little, un-opposable claws with nothing to say. Perhaps Goku’s increasingly cryptic calls had something to do with it. 

She called him nightly after their shows, once the guys had settled in at a hotel. And each time they spoke, it was becoming more and more obvious that Goku wasn’t being entirely forthcoming about the dismal state of their life on the road. While he didn’t feign to paint a pretty picture and admitted that Vegeta was excessively drinking and using, that they were all exhausted and at a breaking point, constantly bickering like bitter foes, she sensed there was a part of the story he was holding back. With as long as she’d known him, she could always tell when he was skirting a topic. Goku was never very good at playing dumb intentionally. 

The giveaway every night was the same question, or a variation of it… _What’s he doing?_ or _Where is he?_ The first few times, Goku would hesitate and stumble over his words. _Out smoking_ or _asleep_ being his go-to excuses, neither of which were all that convincing when he cleared his throat immediately after his little fibs and quickly made to wrap-up the calls. Goku either didn’t know where Vegeta was, or more likely, he did but didn’t want to be the one to say it. 

Bulma wasn’t stupid. She knew Vegeta well enough to know that his crippling self-hate led him to do things he’d regret on purpose, especially where they concerned her. In a way, she kind of expected it. He tried to push her away, but she refused to be shoved. So of course he’d resort to baser methods. Vegeta knew her limits, and whether it was deliberate or subconscious didn’t really matter. Either way, it was fucked up. 

Most nights she couldn’t sleep after their phone calls. Not that she was picturing Vegeta’s ultimate debasement of their relationship. It had already been severed. Worse was knowing him so well that she could actually make sense of his twisted mind and the reasons _why_ he did the things Goku was afraid to tell her. Vegeta’s intent to prove to her that he wasn’t worth saving eclipsed any sensible scorn she should have been feeling, like her mind shelved it all away, and the only thing that mattered in the short term was keeping him from killing himself. The rest didn’t matter, at least not for now.

Watching Vegeta’s little clone run around the field offered some form of hopeful distraction, and she found herself looking forward to confronting the dickhead teenager.

She waited for them to finish their scrimmage and make their way back to the building’s locker rooms. 

“Hey! Tarble!” Bulma called, stomping after him. 

The boy spun around, his grin faltering as he realized who was standing before him. He was surrounded by his teammates, whose faces all dropped as they started pushing and shoving him, muttering in shocked expletives about the Capsule Corp heiress and known girlfriend of Vegeta Ouji appearing before them. 

All their _shit dudes… what the fucks… it wasn’t a joke, T!…_ collapsed on the poor boy as the color drained from his face, realizing that he’d been sending crude messages to the actual heiress of Capsule Corp, asking her to flash her tits among other body parts.

“Can I talk to you… Privately?”

Tarble’s classmates pushed the stunned boy toward her, and his feet began to follow her back toward the bleachers, the color returning to his cheeks with a vengeance as he blushed at the teens’ suggestive comments that were shouted at his back.

Bulma spun toward the punk once they were far enough away. She didn’t have to say anything and relished his shift in demeanor. A grin was still twisted across his face, but it was backed by a nervous embarrassment. 

“I’m so sorry!” Tarble held up his hands, waving them at her. “I didn’t think you were who you said. I’d never say that shit if I knew. I thought the guys were fucking with me. I thought it was the Porunga Academy team or maybe my ex-girlfriend, or even these dudes.” He jerked his head toward his teammates that were hovering a hundred feet away near the doors to the building. 

“It’s fine, kid. I wouldn’t have believed me either.”

He looked so much like Vegeta, a spitting image, but younger and healthier. He had the same thick black mane with auburn highlights that spiked up and around his head; the same dark eyes, but they were clear and full of life; the same petite stature, maybe an inch or two shorter. He was just at Bulma’s height. The hook in his grin was even the same, but Tarble’s hosted none of Vegeta’s cynicism. He wasn’t smiling at the bottom of the world’s cruelest jokes. His voice was even similar, but hosted less of the rasp in Vegeta’s overcooked lungs.

Tarble sat down on the bottom bleacher to unclasp his shin guards, seemingly happy to find something to do with his attention rather than nervously stare at her. But the silence got the better of him, and eventually, he looked back up at her to ask, “So… Vegeta Ouji from Icejin is my _actual_ brother?”

“Yep!”

“How do you know?”

“I’m a genius, and I’ve had good intel… and have you seen you?” 

“Yeah,” he laughed. “I mean, I always got the doppelgänger jokes. Believe me, they lay it on thick. I even went as him for Halloween last year because a girl asked me to. That’s why I thought you were fucking with me, ‘cause everyone’s making those jokes.”

“Well… It’s no fucking joke. Please don’t tell me you don’t know you’re adopted. I don’t want to be that person.”

“Pfft,” Tarble shook his head. “Oh, I know. My parents told me before I had thoughts. And even if they didn’t, I look pretty fucking Saiyan, don’t you think?”

“Yeah… You guys are your own breed.”

“So, what now? I mean… Why’n’t he come? Or doesn’t he know about me?”

Bulma shifted against the cold metal seat. She couldn't lie to the kid. “Well… Tarble, the short answer is no, he doesn’t know that we’re in contact, but yes, he knows that you exist.”

The boy tilted his head and winged a cocky brow. “What does that mean, exactly? He doesn’t want to meet me? Then why are you here?”

“Vegeta… he’s…” Bulma tried to find a way to summarize the man, but couldn’t. If she was going to force this kid into his world, he deserved to know everything. Blindsiding them both would be like trying to light a bottle rocket with a firecracker. One of them, at least, needed to know the whole truth.

“Tarble, can I buy you dinner? It’s a long story.”

***

Vegeta felt in a daze through soundcheck, just going through the motions. Fingers floated over the strings at the sound engineer’s direction, but it was all muscle memory, not conscious thought. The Icejin news had his head floating outside of itself. It was surreal. His mind couldn’t, for the life of him, consolidate the melange of emotions that were currently circuiting through his mind with what _should_ be. Not that he could pinpoint them even if they were textbook.

They’d heard from the venue staff what had happened. It seemed Zarbon had gotten lazy or overconfident in his game. He tried to pick up a girl whose boyfriend was with her, and he was caught red-handed by a bartender spiking her drink. A fight broke out with the boyfriend, and Zarbon was currently sitting in the county jail with second degree assault and conspiracy charges lodged against him. 

News of his arrest already hit the press, and Vegeta had a feeling the incident was the tip of the iceberg. Surely, the others would start coming forward in the following days, at least the ones that had already been willing to tell their stories to the Browbeater journalist. If that happened, it was only a matter of time before Frieza was implicated too. Vegeta only hoped that they’d keep a lid on his own involvement. Nappa had already spoken to Whis, who assured them as much, but even Whis admitted his control over the matter in the longterm was limited. 

They played a full track and made final adjustments to the mix. Afterward, Vegeta moved his equipment out of the way for the local bands to check their own gear and left to find the girl.

“You’re in a better mood than yesterday,” she said as he and Raditz clamored into the back of the van with her.

“Yeah, and I’m about to lose it if you don’t hurry up,” he snapped.

Was he in a good mood? If he was exhibiting signs of one, he didn’t feel it. Whatever his mood was, it was about to drastically shift for the worse if he didn’t get a fix. It hadn’t even been a full day since his last hit, and already a headache was creeping into his skull, and his body was struggling to regulate its temperature. Like the beginnings bad fever, it alternated between extremes, spiking into hot flashes before dunking him in chills. If he didn’t head off the dope sick that was seeping in, it wouldn’t be long before he wished he was dead. Not to mention a bump would serve to curb the clusterfuck of anxious thoughts that were twining through his mind like a malignant tumor.

Her eyes widened, and she scrambled to cut three lines. “This is the last of it, but I can call some people.”

“Wait… what? How much did you fucks do last night?” Goddammit. While he was stuck cuddling Kakarot, these two were blowing through the supply without him? His mood, whatever it was, instantly soured as he glared between them.

“Calm the fuck down, Vegeta. She said she’ll find some more.” 

Cat nodded with a timid smile and held out a bill.

Even after a solid hit, the odd sensations still lingered in the pit of his stomach. Vegeta took to pacing in the back parking lot with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a smoke in the other. Kakarot came out twice to convince him to eat, but he wasn’t hungry. Getting high always sapped his appetite. But more than that, it was that strange fluttering he couldn’t make sense of, like he’d swallowed a live bird that was now trying to peck its way out of his gut.

Once the doors opened, the back lot became overridden by the opening bands, their guests and crew, leaving Vegeta vulnerable to their attempts at conversation. He wandered off down the alley between the venue and the adjacent building, determining the dumpsters more worthy of his company. He knelt against one and pulled out the phone Bulma had given him to reread her texts. Whether they’d help or hurt at this point was anyone’s guess, but the ritual surveillance was a habit he couldn’t kick, and not having received a message yet today was picking at his sanity as much as Icejin. His finger hovered over the call button. 

Something moved behind him, sending a piece of cardboard to fall from the overflowing dumpster and hit the ground next to him. Vegeta leapt back to his feet, a sudden wave of chills crawling through his skin as he anticipated the scurry of a rat. But nothing else moved. A moment passed and everything seemed silent. He lifted the piece of cardboard, checking beneath it, and tossed the material back into the garbage. Then he heard it, the high-pitched mewl of a cat coming from inside the bin. He tipped up the soggy boxes that were heaped on the top, and there it was, a tiny tuxedo kitten no bigger than his two fists, staring back at him with golden eyes. It was wet from the rain, it’s wiry coat poofed out around it. Scared as it was, it didn’t run. It had nowhere to go but further into the trash, or maybe it was in shock. But it didn’t squirm until he had it in his hands. He kept his movements slow, soothing, holding it against him as he sat back down on the ground. He didn’t know how long he sat there, but eventually the kitten calmed and laid still in his arms, falling asleep as he stroked it.

The buzz of his phone felt like a tiny electrocution with the way his heart jumped inside his chest. Finally, she texted him. He tried not to shift too much as he pulled it from his pocket.

 _‘Busy day. Hope you’re well,’_ was all it said. 

Perhaps, he was reading too much into it, but the message felt generic and detached. He stared at the green display for long seconds, trying to wrestle a new panic that cratered a hole inside his sinking stomach—the idea that Bulma might actually, slowly disengage. It was what he wanted for her own sake, what the part of him that truly cared about her wellbeing demanded, but that part of him was weak when reality came knocking. The sick side of his mind shouted in protest. Bulma could pry herself out of his cold, dead fingers. There was no fucking way he was capable of letting her go. His finger pressed the call button. 

Anxiety surged up his throat and burned behind his eyes. He bit at his thumb, his knee bouncing beneath the kitten’s head as he listened to it ring and ring. But then her voice sounded over the line. 

“Vegeta?” 

Not her voicemail. She said his name. Hearing it fall against his ear cracked a barely viable levy, and he turned away from the receiver to patch it up—clearing the phlegm from his throat and steadying his breath before he responded. 

“Hey…” was all he could manage to croak.

“It’s good to hear your voice.” She sounded tired herself, which was quite the feat for the seemingly infinite battery that was Bulma Briefs. 

Now that he had her on the line, he didn’t know what else to say. Why did he call her? He couldn’t find the right words, much less speak them had they been on the tip of his tongue. As much as his eyes threatened, he refused to let himself get emotional. But despite his best effort, halting the prickling threat of tears only made his nose run instead. He covered the receiver to wipe it against his sleeve. Why couldn’t she just start talking, yelling, anything? 

“How are you?” she finally broke the long silence. 

“I found a cat.” What the fuck? He had no control. It was the first thing that came to mind, like the line between his brain and his mouth was severed. But she played along. She would always play along.

“A cat? Where?”

“In a dumpster behind the venue. It’s a kitten. It’s really tiny.”

“Vegeta, there’s probably more!” Her tone brightened, infused with new energy. Whatever baggage mounted between them was buried for a moment. Like her daily texts, she was pretending that everything was normal, that this was just an extension of them. “There could be a whole litter back there.”

“Are you asking me to dig through the garbage?”

“Yeah!” 

“Maybe after the show. This one’s asleep, and I don’t want to move it yet.”

“You’re holding it? God Vegeta, sometimes I wonder if in your past life you were a cat. Scratch is acting like his nine lives are over without you. He’s just moping around the house all day and sleeps in your clothes. Gonna have to find a therapist for him if you don’t come home soon.”

 _Home_. He didn’t know what to make of the idea that she still believed he had one. Guilt surged through his body in a hot wave, like his conscience was lobster chucked into the pot. If she knew the things he’d done in the past few weeks, he doubted she’d speak another word to him ever again. 

The dramatic pendulum he subjected himself to in wanting her one second and not the next had swung off its axis nearly every night. And now that he was talking to her, all their nameless faces flickered through his mind’s eye, ready to be called upon as prime witnesses to his self-destruction. It didn’t matter that they were technically separated. They weren’t technically together when he spent the night in Eighteen’s hotel room either, and even though nothing happened that night, he met the vitriolic rage that Bulma stored specifically for cheating pseudo-boyfriends. If he was committed to driving a stake into their relationship as he had been before he left for tour, it would be too easy. But he couldn’t, not when the pendulum had swung back this far.

He drew a long breath that escaped his nose in a snort. He didn’t know what else to say. He wished she would keep talking like she used to when they were in bed all day and he could just listen to her voice ramble on about nothing. But it was awkward now. His indecision, his erratic back and forth between suffocating need and desperate severance made it awkward. And the longer the silence droned on, the more he felt his emotions getting away from him. He missed her and how they used to be, and the fact that she was silent ripped through him like another permanent wound to add to his collection. Self inflicted or not, it still hurt like hell. 

“Bulma, tick-tock,” a male voice spoke her name across the line, and Vegeta felt the blood drain from his head as the gears in his skull abruptly shifted from remorse to a mood far from it. 

“Who the fuck is that?”

She hesitated. She fucking hesitated. 

“Bulma! Are you on a fucking date?” 

“Of course not! I’m…” She paused for a breath, and her voice became low and muffled as if she was speaking into her hand. “Don’t be upset. You know me well enough by now to understand that I can’t let things go. It’s the defining flaw in my character that hooked you in the first place, and it’s why we’re still torturing each other.”

He couldn’t scrounge up a guess as to where this was headed, but the idea of her on a date with another man felt like a hot iron seared into his skull and moltened his brains. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I’m with your brother,” she sighed. Her exasperation cut clear across the line, enough to hush his immediate urge to buck her. “You knew I would. Vegeta, this is just the person I am. You said it yourself—you’re a fucking complex equation, and I’m gonna find your Lagrangian.” 

“I don’t know what the fuck that means.”

“It means trust me, Vegeta. Do you trust me?”

“I don’t trust anybody…” He heard her lungs deflate before he could finish his thought. “But Bulma,” he butted in, “gun to my head, if I had to, it’d be you.”

“I think that’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me. Besides calling me the queen of mermaids and begging me to marry you, of course.”

“The what? Oh fuck...” He vaguely recalled saying some crazy shit like that at the rave. God, the way his mind worked, splintering off into different worlds, be they hellishly dire or stupidly hopeful, would forever be elusive. He couldn’t control it. He tried, with substances, to wrangle his head in a certain direction—the path of least resistance, the numb one that didn’t ask for anything but to exist in the present moment free from the miserable state of anxiety his _normal_ self let immobilize him, that made even the simple act of breathing a feat to be conquered.

“Vegeta, you’d like him,” she went on. “It must be genetic, because he’s a pig-headed little smartass just like you. You’re practically twins.”

There was an exaggerated huff from the other end that he assumed was his brother protesting her claim. If it was, maybe they were kin. _His brother_... the idea in and of itself was abstract enough, but that Bulma was with him at this very moment felt like a different plane of existence. As much as he balked at first, hearing his voice made him real, shifted the idea of him into something tangible. He had a brother, flesh and blood, who was sitting with her now. A person… that was his in a way… until he inevitably fucked up and spoiled it the same way he did to every relationship.

“I... I don’t-”

“Don’t say anything. Just shut up for once, Vegeta. You’re an overly reactive person, and I know it takes you a minute to digest your thoughts and feelings without biting everyone’s head off. So for all of our sakes, don’t share them until you know what you really want to say. Good luck tonight,” she said, and without saying goodbye, she hung up. 

As hurt as he felt by the abrupt end to their phone call, he was glad she answered at all. She shouldn’t have. She should have left him to rot in his own cradle of filth a long time ago, but for some reason beyond his comprehension, she was dragging it out by believing he could be saved. That she even thought he was worth it was a conundrum his twisted mind constantly tried to sabotage, a self-fulfilling prophecy, just like she’d claimed.

Vegeta looked down to the cat in his lap. He hadn’t felt this up since the weekend at Kame. Icejin’s dominos were falling. Zarbon tipped the first, and Frieza was sure to follow. He’d meet his sorry end without Vegeta’s testimony if enough of their other victims came forward. Maybe he’d avoid the whole drama, get off scot free. It was wishful thinking, but after talking to Bulma, his fickle mood was leaning toward the pathetically wishful. 

***

Tarble called his parents… well, not so much his parents as their housekeeper, and lied. As an honor student at Shenron Academy, it was easy. Both his parents were workaholics, and they gave less than a flying fuck about his whereabouts so long as his grades reflected their stature in the community. They were both nice people, that wasn’t a thing with them. To a degree, he loved them and was grateful for the cushy life they provided, but for the most part, they were wholly absent, focused on their own drives and his two younger siblings—the twins that were his parents’ own natural phenomenons, and that, by all intents and purposes, were unrelated to him. They all were unrelated. 

So when Bulma, the hot as hell heiress of Capsule Corporation, asked him to dinner with the promise of meeting his flesh and blood family—who also happened to be the alt crowd’s ‘it’ boy—Tarble made the executive decision to stretch the truth and tell his ‘nanny’ that he was at a friend’s place and wouldn’t be home that night to partake in the stale conversation his parents wound around the table.

They ate in cheap diner, of all places, in a vinyl booth with a miniature jukebox attached to it that people could put quarters in to hear their favorite old-timey hits.

Bulma seemed nervous as he stared at her across the booth, and he couldn’t guess why beyond his resemblance to his brother. 

His _brother_... It felt so fucking weird to imagine that Vegeta Ouji, a rockstar in his own right, was his actual sibling. The fact that the guy’s equally famous girlfriend was seeking him out, albeit hesitantly, left him in an odd state of levity. He should have been excited by the fact that he had real kin beyond the parents that claimed him and resolutely disregarded him as nothing but a another one of their assets. But at the same time, Bulma seemed weary of him. Well… not so much him as what he represented. 

There was a lot to unpack with his biological brother, if the tabloids were any indication, and Tarble wasn’t going to ask first. He wanted to know the heiress’s game. So he sat, smirking at her across the booth until she gave way.

“So… Vegeta…” she said, tapping the end of her straw against the table to free it from the paper wrapper. “I’m not gonna lie to you dude, I don’t know where to start.”

“How about how you met him?” Tarble said, lifting his brows. It was an easy question. If this was some Hollywood romance made for the tabloids, he’d suss it out.

“I grew up with Goku, the lead singer. We went to Kameha High together.” She took a suck of her soda and frowned. “Don’t look at me like that! Yes, I went to public school. There’s no fucking difference you piss ass prince, besides it being better!”

Tarble laughed. He didn’t realize he was sneering when she said it. Kameha High was actually a tough combatant in most sports, one Shenron Academy deemed a viable rival. Even Perunga Academy couldn’t beat the raw talent the city’s public high school drew. And beyond sports, the public schools weren’t too shabby at academics either. They were more focused on math and sciences, where the private academies were hell bent on teaching religious fairy tales instead, failing to dedicate much thought to this century’s viable subjects. Tarble was almost expelled twice for asking too many snarky—in his opinion, very logical—questions during their pointless theology lectures, and if he weren’t the school’s best asset on the field and his parents their biggest donors, he surely would have been swiftly removed.

“I don’t think Shenron is better. In fact, I should be at Kameha now, but mom and dad wouldn’t dream of it. Can you imagine the shame of public school?” he explained with a melodramatic flair, clasping a fist in jersey as he turned his eyes to the ceiling.

The girl across from him tipped her head with a knowing smirk. “Yes… Kid, I’ve heard it my whole life. Not from my parents because they’re real. For them, it’s not about name-dropping, or money, or glory, thank Kami. But their associates, the board members… You won’t believe how many powerful people are breathing down my neck. It’s why I just keep going to school. They can’t touch me there. But the moment I graduate… That’s when they’ll try to pin me down and negotiate over my father’s life’s work as if he’s already a corpse. It’s fucking asinine. He’s not even fifty, and already the vultures are out to peck at him. I hate it. Besides enjoying college life, part of the reason I stay in school is to put them off. Fuck those hoes.” 

Tarble was instantly in love. Sure, any white collared buttsucker would think her language and approach and presence in general was childish, but she wasn’t. She was a fucking badass, and if Vegeta Ouji was dating her, that only proved the point. Fuck that generation. They lived and died by their stupid fantasies that were in no way based in the real world. And on top of it, they took advantage of the generation below them, paying them pennies on the dollar and muddying the pool of fortune by gobbling up every business into slivers of stock—to the point that thousands of employees, or even customers, meant nothing compared to the few highstakes shareholders that demanded exponential gains to bloat their fortunes every quarter. 

His senior year was fast approaching, and his parents were relentless on him joining that very scum-sucking establishment. Finance, that’s what they hoped he’d aspire to… become some greedy investment banker like them and fuck over everyone else. But in Tarble’s head, his parents didn’t deserve a say. 

As much as his well-to-do caretakers cried over their inability to spawn themselves into obedient clones, they sure didn’t give a shit about trying to raise him once he was adopted. Nannies raised him. And then, after eight years, his parents had their own clones, literally. By Kami’s miraculous, spectacular grace-granting butthole, they were blessed with twins of their own, and Tarble was relegated to a centerpiece, a talking point at dinners to impress certain folks that deemed refugee adoptions as extremely admirable, and most definitely good for their public persona.

Fuck him, Bulma Briefs was beautiful and smart. No wonder his brother was dating her. 

“And Vegeta?” he asked. It was as good a prompt as any. They weren’t here to talk about school.

“And Vegeta…” Bulma sighed. “He didn’t have the luxury of family. He grew up getting kicked out of group homes before he ran away to find you. Maybe not you, per se, but the idea of you. Tarble, you’re his family, whether he wants to admit it or not. He’s spent his whole life searching for something out of his reach, and it messed him up mentally. He gave up, not just on that, but on himself. So, I found you for him.”

“Me?… You’re telling me that Vegeta Ouji’s been looking for me?” It seemed far-fetched. He’d been here the whole time. For seventeen years, he’d been here. The idea that some notorious rockstar had been seeking him out and never found him was a bit out of the realm of lodgeable belief. 

“Tarble, you have no idea how important you are. You’re the only piece of family he has left. And he needs you. You need each other. He’s just too stubborn to admit it.”

“I’ll bite, Bulma. I’ve got nothing to lose,” Tarble told her. It was true, the stakes were irrelevant as far as he was concerned. It was his brother that seemed to hold the muck bucket. “Just tell me what to do.” 

Her phone started to buzz, and she seemed intent on ignoring it out of some show of politeness, despite that Tarble could see the pain that was writ all over her face as she silenced the call. 

“It’s him, isn’t it? You should answer, Bulma.”

Her blue eyes flicked to him. She knew he was right, and in half a second, she answered. “Vegeta?”

She wasn’t hiding the conversation at first. There was nothing to hide. Most of it was about cats, and all of it, from where he was sitting, felt super awkward, like they weren’t even friends, like they were randos that met on an eight hour flight to Rome and were just stuck next to each other, forced to talk… about their cats. That’s when the waiter came over, and Tarble suggesting they order turned into a whole ordeal he wasn’t prepared for. His brother was a hot-tempered psycho… That knowledge was not lost on him when he simply said Bulma’s name loud enough for Vegeta to hear over the phone, and that immediately, in his brother’s mind, meant he was fucking his girlfriend. Tarble smiled from across the table in awe of the insane relationship this woman held with his supposed kin. 

She seemed to settle Vegeta down once she professed an odd idea about mermaids and getting married, covering her hand over the receiver as if Tarble couldn’t hear her despite being two feet across a diner booth. Hell, if that was love, he was doing it all wrong with the three sort-of-girlfriends he currently had. Shit, just call her a mermaid and propose. That’ll keep a broad coming back for more… apparently. 

The heiress admitted that she was with him, and went so far as to call him a pig-headed smartass, despite knowing him for less than an hour, but Tarble just huffed and shrugged when she looked at him. Maybe that was true, and it was genetic. If Vegeta Ouji was a pig-headed smartass too, then Tarble most definitely wanted to know him. He’d gladly befriend anyone defined by those terms because it meant Vegeta was authentic. 

Maybe all the gossip was actually true, and Vegeta really was a violent, drug-addled maniac. It was better than being a fake, some hairbrained celebrity trying to make a buck in the spotlight. He was a real person with real problems, and it didn’t matter that he was a belligerent addict. Tarble wanted nothing more than to meet him.

***

First things first, he had to figure out where to stash this cat. After a quick scan, he pulled one of the dryer, more intact boxes from the garbage and headed to the van. They would have to find a better solution tomorrow, but for now, a few t-shirts stuffed in the bottom of a cardboard box would have to be sufficient. Kakarot helped him reinforce the sides with gaff tape and cut the top off a plastic cup to make a makeshift bowl of water. 

“What are you gonna name it?” he asked.

Vegeta shrugged. “Fuck if I know. How do I tell if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Look at its butt.” He scooped up the poor animal by its tail, ignoring its squealing and squirming. “Girl,” Kakarot said. “See. Two holes, no balls.”

“Thanks for the visual, Kakarot, but I think that qualifies as abuse.”

He giggled in that obnoxious way he always did when he was feeling self-conscious. “She’s fine. You ready to play?”

Vegeta shrugged. He’d have to be. The human Cat hadn’t returned yet. The line she gave him hours ago was enough to stave off sickness, but not enough to cut down the anxiety that was itching back into his veins.

Whatever he was feeling, Raditz was too. The moment they plugged in their instruments on the darkened stage, he was fiddling arpeggios, barely giving Kakarot a chance to greet the crowd. Vegeta watched Kakarot toss a mean look to his brother over his shoulder. Raditz stopped flicking the strings long enough to roll his eyes at the ceiling, acting all hot and bothered. 

The crowd was already going wild before the lights lit the stage. Kakarot abandoned his attempt to speak, and instead nodded at Vegeta to hit the first chord. Their shouts swelled over the sound of his guitar, and by the time the drums kicked in, Vegeta felt the heady escape of his craft take hold. It was like time travel through a smooth universe—no gravity, nothing to weigh him down. He’d slipped into the infinite arms of time without resistance. The first three songs floated by that way, and his head was only brought back to the present to re-tune his guitar. 

Kakarot was talking to the audience, and for a moment, Vegeta looked across their sea of faces. Like all their shows to date, the venue was sold out with over three thousand people. If he blurred his vision, they always looked less like individuals than a single vessel that swayed and shouted and moved like a gelatinous alien creature. 

He crossed his eyes like a child, staring at the blob of faces in front of him when a light glinted among the crowd, and Vegeta uncrossed his vision long enough to catch a brief glimpse of a chrome-horned mask that sent his stomach to plummet out from under him, like all the air had been suddenly sucked from the room. He was frozen in place, except for his eyes, which darted back to where he’d thought he’d seen it, but it the face was gone. His eyes skittered across the crowd to find it again. Standing still as stone, he barely heard Nappa’s sticks counting in the next song and was startled from his stupor by the blast of drums at his back. He missed the first measure, but Nappa was attentive enough to bring the beat around again to lead him in. Once he resumed his position at the mic, he lost himself again.

They finished their set as usual to the sing songy cries of the crowd shouting over them. If there was a measure of bliss in this world, this moment was it. Every damn night, the commune of voices that overwhelmed his and Kakarot’s own vocals was proof that he’d done something worthwhile in his short life. No matter how loud he screamed into the mic, he couldn’t hear himself. Drowned out by the collective sound of thousands of his peers that identified with his plight as they shouted his lyrics back at his face with passionate screams was evidence enough that he wasn’t crazy and alone in his train of thought. They all felt him. Inside this morpheus creature swaying in the darkness of the pit were people that maybe didn’t host all of the same dark thoughts, but at the very least, every single one of them understood where they came from, or they wouldn’t be screaming like that. Some comfort could be taken from knowing he wasn’t totally alone.

The moment it was over, when reality was a dull, buzzing echo in his ears, Vegeta came down with a force as he packed up his gear. He needed a hit to stop the onset of his punishing psyche that poked and prodded with fiendish thoughts, promising sickness and misery if he didn’t get his fix soon. Once backstage, he immediately buddied up to Raditz in the green room, hoping Cat had an update. 

“She’s on her way back. Twenty minutes man,” was his reply. Raditz handed off a bottle of whiskey that Vegeta was too wound up to drink. He pushed it back into his hands.

“I’ll be in the alley. Call me the second she gets here.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Raditz brushed him off with an absent wave, his attention focused on the groupies inside the room.

Vegeta ducked out the back door. He checked on the kitten in the van, which was curled up sleeping among the t-shirts, before he moved around to the back alley where he’d found it and lit a cigarette. It was quiet except for the dull thud of house music playing from inside the venue, and he tuned it out, trying to listen for the meows of the rest of the litter, if they existed. His mind begged to be distracted by anything else besides his next fix, and he began to toss the boxes off the heap and search the rest of the area in case Bulma was right and there were more cats hiding among the dumpsters. 

He crouched down to check beneath the containers when he heard the rustle of heavy steps over his shoulder, and he turned his head just in time to catch the boot flying toward it. It smashed into the side of his face with a hard kick that knocked him against the dumpster, and he rolled to his back trying to catch his bearings as stars flooded his vision. Another kick to his ribs sent his breath to leave his lungs. Perhaps he had some sense of self preservation buried in him after all, because the next kick to his head should have knocked him out. Vegeta fought to say conscious as his vision collapsed around him, submerging him in darkness, and he tried to flip over to push himself back to his feet, but an arm pounced on him, held him down by his neck, fisted in the front of his shirt, and a weight settled against his hips. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t see straight. But the voice he recognized in an instant. The unctuous tones oozed over him like hot oil. 

“Hello monkey. Did you miss me?” 

Vegeta’s vision came back to him in busted fragments to see his fear reflected in a chrome, horned mask, as if staring into the twisted mirrors of a fun house. It hovered above his face with a tuft of purple hair spilling over the top of it. 

“Fuck you,” he croaked.

Attempts to pull his arms away were feeble at best, as weak as he was in this condition, and he tried to lift his hips to buck him off, but Frieza only ground his weight against him and laughed. 

“Sorry to disappoint you little pet. I know how much you enjoyed our fun, but that’s not why I’m here.” His weight shifted into his forearm that was wedged against Vegeta’s throat, cutting off his air. “You took something from me. Was it almost a year ago? How time flies!”

It _was_ nearly a year ago that he’d hospitalized the man in an effort to prevent being put in this very position.

“You might say I’m spoiled. I won’t deny it. I don’t like it when my toys are taken from me, especially when I can’t take them back. And you were my favorite.” His chromed head tipped to the side as he embellished his claims in a sugary tone, sending Vegeta’s nerves to mute themselves in defense, preparing for the worst. He couldn’t breathe the way his arm was pressed against his throat, much less call for help, and was forced to listen to the creep monologue against his ear as he pressed his plastic horns to his face and whispered, “I was so disappointed by your little rebellion. Call me Hammurabi, but I think fair is fair, don’t you?”

Vegeta couldn’t react beyond his pathetic attempts to squirm beneath him. His lungs were starting to burn from lack of oxygen, and his head felt light, as if Frieza’s elbow was pinching off a balloon. The grip Vegeta had on his arm slackened, and as his fingers released their hold, the idea that Frieza might be desperate and vengeful enough to kill him became a viable outcome in his mind. As much as he knew he deserved a miserable end, he forced his eyelids shut, refusing to watch himself suffocate in the mirrored face of a ghoul. 

Frieza cackled, as if there was no greater joy on Kami’s green Earth than to see Vegeta break all over again. He released his throat, and Vegeta gasped and sputtered to catch his wind, his eyes popping open. It was as if his life was a switch Frieza flicked on and off for his own amusement. The moment his breathing evened enough for him vocalize a noise, Frieza closed the gap on his escape with the cold press of a switchblade that landed against his temple. With his free hand, he lifted the chrome mask from his pale visage. A jagged scar spiderwebbed across the left side of his face, zig-zagged over his temple. And his eye was fogged over, completely white... _That_ was why they used old promo and why they wore masks now on stage, Vegeta realized. _He_ did that, blinded Frieza in one eye and left that jagged scar across his face.

“Are you proud of your work?” 

Vegeta couldn’t speak. The whites of his eyes were bugging from his skull as Frieza twirled the blade against his head. He moved to scream, but Frieza seemed prepared for that and shoved his gloved hand into Vegeta’s mouth. As hard as he tried to make noise, nobody could hear his muffled cries from the alley, and the louder he tried to make himself, the harder Frieza pressed the cold blade against his temple. The sting of it cut into his skin, and a warm trickle of blood traced along his head to pool in his ear.

“I’d hate to maim such a pretty face, but retribution calls for some punishment. Eye for an eye in this case is a fair deal. Don’t you think?” 

Vegeta couldn’t do anything but lie stiffly against the pavement and moan into the hand that was stuffed inside his mouth. He was too afraid to thrash against him with the edge of the knife already gouging into his skin. Frieza chuckled and pressed his forehead down to meet him. 

“Or do you want me to woo you first?”

Just as Frieza’s face broke a sadistic grin, as if he thought he’d finally won, Vegeta heard Raditz calling for him. It wasn’t far away. He told Raditz where he would be, and from the sound of it, he was just around the corner. Frieza growled, his breath rolling over Vegeta’s face in a huff of rancid wind, but desperate not to be caught, he jumped up from Vegeta’s frame and hightailed down the alley in a blur, leaving as fast as he’d come.

Vegeta had barely sat up when Raditz turned the corner to find him sitting against a dumpster, shaking and holding a hand to his bloodied face.

“Dude, what the fuck!”

Still in shock, he couldn’t open his mouth to speak. Raditz was at his side in a second, pulling him to his feet. His palms wrapped around Vegeta’s cheeks, trying to tear his hand away from the deep slice in the side of his head. But it was like prying a heavy magnet from the fridge. His hand wouldn’t move. 

“What the hell just happened?”

Vegeta shook his head. His eyes were still bugged wide, refusing to digest the fact that Frieza was ready to carve one of them out of his skull had Raditz not been there. 

“Did she find something? I need something.” His voice broke in short breathless bites. “I need to leave. Can we go?”

“Yeah man, I was looking for you. We have a cab. We gotta go now though. Kakarot’s on a rampage.” His distress was clear, and Raditz quickly wrapped an arm around his shoulders as he ushered him to the cab where Cat was waiting. He pushed Vegeta into the backseat with the girl and sat upfront, directing the driver to take them to a hotel. 

Raditz gave up on asking about the assault after ten minutes, and left Vegeta to wallow in his own misery. 

Their phones rang nonstop. Vegeta felt his own buzzing multiple times, but he wasn’t going to answer. His head was laid in the girl’s lap, and she had torn the bandana from his head to press against the cut in the side of his face to stop the bleeding. 

“Hey brah,” Raditz reluctantly answered his own call. “Yeah, we’re cool. He’s here. Relax man, we’re just catching some Z’s at a hotel. Meet you in the morning. No partying, swear to god. Roger that. I’ll text you the address.” 

Whatever lie Raditz told his brother, Vegeta didn’t care. The only thing he cared about was eliminating Frieza from his head. His face was stuck in the forefront of Vegeta’s mind and he wanted it gone by any means necessary.

The hotel was thirty minutes outside of the city, a dive like all the others they’d been in. But the trip felt ten times longer. Even with the girl running her fingers through his hair, he felt like he was going to implode if he didn’t get a fix fast. Dark memories from his time with Icejin were resurfacing with a vengeance, flashing through his mind as if he could see and feel them. He only wanted to bury himself in both a high and blanket, shut off and shut down like a laptop. 

The moment they entered the room, Vegeta spun around to face her. “I don’t care if I sound like a fucking fiend, but my former bandmate just threatened to gouge out my fucking eyeball with a knife. I don’t have time to play around and pretend we’re not addicts. I need a fucking fix right the fuck now.”

The girl winced like she was afraid of him, a reaction he seemed to affect on her more than once in the day he’d known her. 

“Okay,” she said, almost too quiet to hear and dropped her bag onto the bed. She unzipped it and chucked a baggie of brownish powder onto the nightstand between the beds. Vegeta quirked a brow. What the fuck kind of pill was brown? 

“What the fuck is that?”

“It’s dope,” she said, “You’ve never done it?”

“No,” Vegeta and Raditz responded in unison. 

Her eyes rounded, and she smiled meekly, “Oh, well… It’s better. Like percs times ten, I think.”

Raditz cast him a hesitant glance, but Vegeta wasn’t about to back down. He’d do anything to shut off his head in the moment. Not even the medically wrapped syringes she emptied onto the bed could deter him. 

He watched her with curiosity as she heated a bit of the powder along with a dab of some whitish substance and a few drops of water with a zippo until it began to bubble. She tore the filter from one of his cigarettes and rolled it inside the spoon. Then she expertly pulled the liquid through it into a syringe and tapped out the air, turning to look at him, as if asking with her big eyes if he was sure. 

Yes, he was fucking sure. He pulled his hoodie off one arm and extended it before her. 

“It’s easier if you tie it off,” she said. “To find a vein you know?”

Vegeta grumbled impatiently as he unbuckled his belt and pulled it from his pant loops. He let Cat wrap it around his arm and pull it tight. 

“For the record, this really weird for me,” she said. “I never thought I’d be giving Vegeta Ouji his first dose of heroin.”

“So pretend I’m not him,” Vegeta said. 

The girl bit her lip and tapped the needle against his elbow. “Okay, you ready?” she asked.

“Just get on with it.”

The needle pricked into his skin, and the girl exhaled before she slowly, steadily plunged it into his vein. It felt hot on contact, but the burning sensation was quickly overridden by an indescribable ecstasy that rushed through every limb. His entire body was warm, flooded in seconds with a euphoria so strong he forgot every instance of pain he’d ever endured in his fucked up life to the point that he forgot who he was, where he was, and just fell against the bed to close his eyes and revel in weightless bliss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so I might have taken some liberties with Tarble's personality, but I thought it would be more interesting if he was some shit-don't-stink, idealistic teenager who can identify with Vegeta on multiple levels, despite having the opposite life on paper.
> 
> Anyways, hope you enjoyed it. :P
> 
> I just started a new job that’s pretty intense, so chapters might be a little more spread out than usual!
> 
> Big thank you to everyone that’s stuck this long. I swear there’s an end coming (eventually) and this won’t just keep dragging on!


	28. Inches from My Waist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is heavily inspired by Adam Lazzara's "Ghost Man on Third", a song I used to sing at the top of my lungs in the car when I was 16, much to my parents' consternation. Btw- Adam's voice is my Goku lead man inspiration for this story in the same way John Nolan is Vegeta's... Lol if that wasn't obvious by now.
> 
> Anywhoo..... Many thanks to [musicofthespheres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicofthespheres) and [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) for making sure this chapter hits the mark after the last crazy chapter. Jadefyre referred to it as a chaser. It's short, and that seems about right.

The kick drum beat at a fast, steady tempo, its tone deep and rich as claps of thunder. The sound displaced the air around him and shook his brains inside his head, as if his skull was the epicenter of a repetitive quake. He wished he’d stop, that the sound engineer would get the damned mix right already to keep Nappa from pumping his foot against the pedal. 

“Shut the fuck up!” he screamed in some language, he wasn’t sure which.

“Sorry! I’m getting it.” 

The voice that responded was feminine. Vegeta’s mind quickly came-to, and he lifted a blurry eye to see the girl frantically pulling her jeans over her hips before grabbing the nearest garment to cover her naked torso. 

The whole room shook with the steady pounding at the hotel door, and he wouldn’t be surprised to see the crappy, modernist artwork fall from the hooks that held their frames precariously to the room’s thin walls. 

Vegeta groaned and pressed a pillow against his throbbing skull. Whatever painkiller the heroin served last night was long gone, and between Kakarot and Frieza making him their punching bag two nights in a row, his brains were sufficiently rattled and bruised. His left eye was nearly swollen shut, and the gash on the right side of his face reopened in his sleep, painting the sheets like a Jackson Pollock in streaks and blotches of blood.

At least the pounding stopped, but Nappa’s booming anger wasn’t much of a consolation. 

“Get up, you sorry fucks!” 

Vegeta peeked from under the pillow to see him standing between the beds, hands on his hips like some sentry as he scanned the state of the room—at the girl frantically brushing used needles into the bin, at Raditz laying buck naked, ass up on the other bed, drooling into a pillow, and at Vegeta, hiding beneath the tapestry of his own ruby spatter.

Nappa yanked the pillow from his head. “The fuck happened to you?” 

“Nothin.”

“Doesn’t look like nothin. You two get in a fight?” He tipped his chin toward the ape passed out in the next bed.

“Tch… No.” 

Vegeta pressed himself up with shaking arms. If being dehydrated, hungry, and sleep deprived wasn’t bad enough, he was pretty sure he had a concussion. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Heroin, he realized, had a short shelf life compared to the pills he was used to. Like the cocaine of opiates, he went up fast and came down hard, rinse and repeat, over and over, until he passed out near dawn. 

Thankfully, his lights were out before he had to witness the horror show of Raditz getting his freak on in the next bed. That sight would be harder to cleanse from his memory than Frieza’s pale, reptilian-like visage pressed against his forehead. 

“Who the hell did you piss off, then?” Nappa bent to take his chin between his thick fingers, tipping his head up to examine the damage. 

“Does it matter?” he sneered. Nappa didn’t really care. He knew the man was just curious. Vegeta’s sorry life was a gossip rag at the checkout counter, and Nappa was a fiend for drama. “I’m gonna shower.” 

His ribs protested with a sharp, stabbing pain as he made to stand on fragile limbs, trembling like a newborn foal. He slowly made his way to the bathroom, feeling dirty for just having been within the same vicinity of Raditz’s fornicating. He wanted nothing more than a hot shower… well, maybe not nothing. Another shared attribute of heroin and blow was the insatiable way it wound into his veins, and he was already itching and anxious for more. He wished Nappa hadn’t come just yet, and he could get a hit before they crammed inside the van for the long drive to the next city.

Removing his clothes was slow and torturous, and once he got his shirt off, he stared for a long minute in the mirror, tracing his fingers over the dark purple bruise that colored his ribs. He pressed on it, hissing at the shock of pain that spread from the source to steal his breath away. The obvious, pathetic state of his face thanks to Frieza was one thing, but his own lack of care was another. He stared at his reflection, at his sunken eyes and pale pallor, at the evident outlines of his ribs and hip bones. He’d probably lost ten pounds since they left West City, but he didn’t care. In fact, he felt a strange pleasure from it, as if he could divert the uncontrollable torture of his mind in a way by punishing his body. He pressed his fingers between his ribs again against his purple skin, and the air left his lungs with a sharp hiss as pain shot through every nerve, and he was forced to catch himself from collapsing against the countertop.

“I don’t hear the fucking water running!” Nappa beat his big mitt against the door. 

Vegeta grumbled and turned on the shower. In no hurry to appease the dolt, he stood under the scalding water and watched the red stream meet the drain as he scrubbed the side of his face with more force than was necessary. 

His mind refused to consolidate his myriad thoughts into anything that made sense beyond the desire to shoot more smack into his veins and float away. It was instant satisfaction… anxiety gone, anger gone—all the hollow, empty corners in his soul filled for a fleeting moment with something profoundly satiating, far more so than that first breath after Frieza released his throat. He didn’t want to think about any of them, not Frieza, not Zarbon, not even Bulma or his brother. The mere exhaustion of having to think at all was enough to make him want to knock himself out, slam his dumbass brains against the tile and wake up in the next city onstage as the lights flicked on.

Nappa’s relentlessness hastened him along. Unable to deal with the beat of the drummer’s fat fists against the door and the deep rumble of his complaints that cut through the hot cloud of steam, Vegeta succumbed to his demands and redressed in the same dirty clothes before following them out of the room and into the sunny light of day.

“Where’s the van?” asked Raditz, squinting into the almost empty lot. 

“Ha… Let me tell you. That fucking dumpster rat was crying all goddamn night. I don’t know what the hell possessed you idiots to let it piss all over perfectly good merch. You should have left it alone. But nooooo… And now Kakarot is at the pet store wasting money on the thing.”

“What… thing?” Raditz scrunched his brows.

“The kami-damned cat!”

Raditz only frowned further, never having encountered the creature. Vegeta had nearly forgotten about it himself. Sometimes it was hard to tell when he was high or drunk or exhausted, or some combination of the three. And the things he did in hindsight felt like muddy dreams. 

He lit a cigarette and tuned out the rest of Nappa and Raditz’s banter about the animal, neither of whom seemed to be too keen on traveling with a crying kitten. Fuck them; he wasn’t going to send it to a shelter without some guarantee that it’d be adopted. Maybe Bulma would take it for her mother. Panchy rescued sad little vermin all the time.

The human cat looked about as bad as Vegeta felt. She sat down next to him on the curb and slumped her tangled head of hair between her knees. Raditz paced the lot anxiously, and Nappa stood without more than a shift between his hips while they waited for Kakarot to return. 

Vegeta must have passed out, because when he woke to the rumble of an old diesel engine pulling up to the curb and cracked open an eye, Nappa and Raditz were gone, and he was laying in the grass with the blonde’s head resting in the dip of his shoulder. The front door squeaked open and slammed shut. Vegeta had barely floated his lids closed again when Kakarot was shaking his free arm. 

“I need your help,” he said.

Vegeta opened his eyes. But the face he expected to see wasn’t the one staring down at him. It was all hard edges and shadows that blotted out the sun. Kakarot’s gaze was dead and absent, as if he didn’t care to look. He was staring at him the way Vegeta watched their crowds, cross-eyed and indifferent, like they weren’t really there at all. If he had more energy, he’d of laughed. Fucking Kakarot... he broke him. He managed to alienate the one person he thought was too complaisant and ignorant to ever ice him out. Shit, what a goddamned, monumental feat. He wished he had the verve to clap.

“Can you stand?” Kakarot asked, his dull expression unflinching.

Vegeta nodded, slipping his arm free from the girl’s head to extend in front of him. He didn’t know why he was always more tolerant of the dope than anyone else. Sometimes it felt like he and Kakarot were entwined by some invisible rope like marionettes on the same bar. The ambivalence in Kakarot’s face threw him for a loop. Whatever bond they had was on the verge of snapping, though Kakarot still took his hand to pull him to his feet. 

“Just hold her,” Kakarot said. He lifted a squirming, squealing kitten from the cardboard box by the scruff of its neck and set it in Vegeta’s arms. 

“Don’t lift it like that.”

“Her…” Kakarot said. “She’s a girl.”

“ _She’s_ a fucking cat, dipshit.”

Kakarot tore the tags from the front of the carrier with one hard yank and tossed the bit of cardboard into the van. “Her name is Nimbus, and I’m keeping her,” he said, with a haughty tip of his chin.

“You’re what the fuck now?” Vegeta’s attempt to twist his brows in dismay was met with a sharp headache. Kakarot suddenly grew a pair just to fight over a kitten? “I found it. It’s mine.” 

The creature wormed against him, twisting its little body against its chest as it cried. He didn’t really want to be responsible for it, but he felt the need to test his friend’s limits, if only just to see how much more stress they could take. 

Kakarot laughed coldly. He whipped the squeaky cage open with his free hand before he fisted it in the air between them. 

“Look at yourself, Vegeta. What were you even doing last night? Besides her...” he sneered over his shoulder at a whisper toward the girl in the lawn before raising his volume again. “What happened to your face?”

“I didn’t sleep with her,” he snapped. It was the only rebuke he had. Of course, Kakarot was right in every other way. Vegeta had seen it for himself in the mirror just that morning—he couldn’t care for himself, much less another creature.

Kakarot didn’t respond and mutely lifted the carrier for Vegeta to wrangle the wiggly kitten inside. As fun as it was to antagonize him for a hot minute, a pitiful loneliness settled in its place as Kakarot turned away to ready the van. Somehow his withdrawal hurt worse than Vegeta expected, like a punch to his hollow gut. Over the past few months, he dropped his guard with Kakarot—not nearly to the extreme he did with Bulma, but enough to feel the weight of him be torn away. It was his own fault for letting them get close, and his own fault for pushing them away too. He wasn’t surprised by his own knack for self-sabotage. It was his official brand, after all. But knowing it didn’t make it any less painful to see Kakarot turn his back.

***

The affable Son brother had a mysterious flair for getting Vegeta to comply, sucker punches notwithstanding. And Nappa watched them from the corner of his eye as they settled the damn rat in its cage, distracting himself from the intel Raditz just imparted to explain the state of Vegeta’s face.

As many times as he’d drawn a hard line to separate from the punk, told himself that Vegeta’s undoing was his own damn fault, he was always roped back into feeling guilty and protective of him. Raditz’s news exacerbated the normal levels of disdain he held for the kid, throwing the balance out of whack. For all Vegeta’s flaws—his selfish ego, his destructive habits, his inability to return the smallest morsel of care that others offered him in tons—they seemed to pale in comparison to the outside forces that put Vegeta’s worst qualities into overdrive. A classic chicken versus the egg, Nappa spent an inordinate amount of time throughout the past fifteen years wondering if Kid was born crazy or was triggered by events out of his control. Either way, if Vegeta didn’t start holding Icejin accountable for their torment, he was doomed.

They made their way back to the van where Kakarot was bouncing on his heels, whining about their late start. 

“Hurry up! We’re gonna miss soundcheck if we don’t go now.”

“Hate to break it to you, Kakarot, but we’ll be lucky if we make it in time to play at all,” Nappa said, ignoring the lead man’s perplexed scowl as his heels settled against the pavement. “Call the venue and tell ‘em we’re gonna try, but we’ve gotta make a stop at the cop shop.”

“Why?” Kakarot and Vegeta responded in unison. 

“Why do you think?” Was Kid so oblivious that he had to spell it out? Kami, he really did live in his own little world that was somehow direly absent of his own best interests. From the sounds of it, for seven years he allowed Icejin’s abuse to run rampant—hid it away to fester, buried it deep in a vault not even Vegeta himself could access except through self-torture. “Vegeta, you can’t let him get away with that shit. That fucking psychopath has it out for you. If you don’t file a report now, let ‘em see the evidence while it’s still fresh, you’re not gonna have a leg to stand on, legally speaking, and on top of it, you’re gonna be hunted.”

“What the fuck, Raditz? You told him?” Of course, Kid was having none of it. He sidestepped the issue, and instead focused on the fact that Raditz had told Nappa what happened.

“Didn’t know it was a secret,” Raditz stated without turning his attention from the girl, yanking her sluggish form to her feet.

“What’s going on?” asked Kakarot, throwing up his hands in frustration. 

“Nothing!” Vegeta cried. “We’re leaving. Put the goddamn phone away. I’m not filing a fucking report. Frieza’s not gonna follow us.” 

“Wait… Frieza’s here? He did that?” Kakarot finally caught on.

“Shit, Vegeta. In case you’ve forgotten, I worked for the fucker too. Frieza’s not gonna stop until he sees you ruined.” Whatever woeful optimism Kid fronted, Nappa knew that justice, closure, whatever it was Vegeta needed to move on was a pipe dream unless he spoke up to the right people. Local law enforcement was a good start, but the journalists, as humiliating as it might be, would only serve to help him in the long run.

Being outed by them was going to happen eventually. Like Whis explained to Nappa yesterday on the phone, there was no stopping them now. No matter how much he threatened, Browbeater was willing to take the risk. Whis had no leverage with his highest-earning band on the verge of a sinister scandal that also implicated one of the leads in his most promising up-and-comer—a band that eclipsed Icejin’s last record sales in its first week alone. The fact that Vegeta was a minor at the time only amplified the stakes and made the scandal that much more buzzworthy.

According to Browbeater, Vegeta wouldn’t be a headline, at least not out of the gates, but his circumstantial, questionably obtained evidence would run as part of a much larger story about Icejin’s downfall, if that’s what happened. The question was bet on how the dice landed with Zarbon’s current situation, whether the charges stuck or not. But if Vegeta got ahead of it, filed a fresh report on the incident that occured last night, chances were good that Zarbon wasn’t getting out, and Frieza would sit alongside him in the same dank cell. But Kid needed to get over his pride and speak on the record for that to happen.

“Fuck it, let him come for me. I won’t be caught off-guard again,” Vegeta boasted.

Kami, he was hopeless. Nappa shook his head against his palm. Sure, the punk had some spunk, but he was a moron that had no sense of self-preservation. 

“You’re tellin’ me you don’t care if they both get off unpunished? Need I remind you what happened the last time you retaliated? You almost went to prison for five fucking years, minimum!”

“I didn’t though,” he said with a smug roll of his eyes.

“Because you had a good lawyer who pried enough outta ya to help. That’s all I’m trying to say. You need to speak the fuck up. The longer you hide behind your damn pride, the worse this gets for you.”

Calling him out only made him clam up. Vegeta was born into the world with an ego the size of their homeland, and admitting what happened to him with Icejin contradicted every atom that composed his very being, as if vocalizing his experience would somehow start a chain reaction on a cellular level and turn him to ash from the inside out. 

“Help yourself… For once in your damn life!”

“We’d miss the show.” His matter of fact retort wasn’t fooling anybody.

“Fuck the show, man! This is bigger than a show, and you know it!… Kakarot?” Shit, if anyone could convince him, his best buddy could. Nappa locked his attention on the younger Son brother, watching him nervously divert his gaze to his tennis shoes. 

“He doesn’t wanna do it, so can we just go now?”

“Are you serious, Kakarot?” What the fuck was wrong with him? Kakarot was usually so reliable when it came to taking the righteous path. Instead, his tone was short and sober. 

“Let ‘em do what he wants,” Kakarot muttered with an unexpected shrug. 

His annoyance was obvious, and Nappa’s eyebrows arched as he digested this new dynamic. He wasn’t surprised. It had been slowly building over the past few weeks. The veil had finally been lifted from Kakarot’s eyes. 

For too many months he stupidly stroked Vegeta’s ego in an effort to befriend him. Kakarot had likely never met anyone that didn’t immediately swoon into his affable, open arms, and getting Vegeta to crack like a nut became a challenge, at least subconsciously. Bulma suffered from the same ailment. It was no wonder the both of them were so adamant about sticking with the little fucker when he clearly held none of the same respect for them. 

Earning Vegeta’s affection was a hard won battle. Once they managed that feat, they were quickly suckered into his world and hard pressed to give up their gains. From what Nappa understood, Kakarot, Bulma, and even Chi-Chi to an extent, were all duped by the brat—not that Vegeta was consciously aware of the destruction he wrought. He existed in the eye of a hurricane, and everywhere he went, he left nothing but chaos in his wake.

“I’m going to play, unless Vegeta has something to say about it.” Finally, Kakarot reached his summit of understanding, and from there it was a sharp slope to meet Nappa in the mixed slush of ambivalence. Except that Nappa wasn’t there to meet him in the moment. That was Vegeta’s curse—his shit circumstances always seemed to buy him a pass. Nappa was back to rooting for Kid to win. This was Vegeta’s chance to tip the scales, have his vengeance and move on, but he was too stubborn to take it. 

Nappa’s pleading was only met by Vegeta’s dark glower, a look blacker than the bruise around his eyeball. He wouldn't budge. He was committed to his secret, despite the fact that he had to know, at least deep down, it wouldn’t remain one much longer. Vegeta wasn’t an idiot, but he was willfully ignorant when backed into a corner he couldn’t fight his way out of with a clever tongue or a fast fist. Fear of public humiliation, that’s what this was, and it immobilized him. Instead of fighting forward, he fought backward, clawed the walls behind him, tearing off his own fingernails in his desperate search for an exit that wasn’t there. 

A part of Nappa wondered how much of his worldview was warped by the narcotics he’d been abusing since he was a teen, and had obviously graduated to injecting straight into his veins. Losing track of his pills was perhaps worse than the alternative. He’d seen the needles. That little bitch Raditz was courting dealt in drugs that would kill them both if they weren’t careful. And those two weren’t careful for different reasons. Where Raditz was stupid, Vegeta knew what he was doing, and he was all too ready to nosedive straight into the cold, hard ground. Nobody, it seemed, was left to convince him otherwise.

“Fine,” Nappa waved a palm at him and Kakarot both. “If you two think one fucking show is more important, who am I to disagree?”

“Fine. Let’s go.” Kakarot spun toward the front door and climbed into the driver’s seat without so much as an impatient glance back as he waited for the rest of them. Raditz and that girl followed.

Vegeta lingered at the back of the van, staring off into the distance at nothing. He looked like he was about to keel over, like if Nappa touched him, his bones would fracture to dust, and he’d float away in the wind. 

“Come on,” Nappa said, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck. Vegeta huffed through his nose, and his head dropped into Nappa’s palm, perhaps unintentionally. But feeling the weight of it, under the circumstance, Nappa moved to do something he’d never done in the fifteen years he’d known the brat… He pulled him into his chest and hugged him. It wasn’t returned, of course. Vegeta stiffened in rigor mortis. It was too much for the arrogant prick to handle at length. He twisted away and mimicked Kakarot’s plea to leave.


	29. Days You Spent Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big hug to [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) for beta reading. I have since added approximately 9000 words, so please forgive any bad grammar or typos!

A pair of golden eyes stared back at him as Goku pinched open the crate, and Nimbus extended her front legs to stretch before she stepped onto the bench. Her velvety, pink nose flared with quick breaths as she sniffed the air and watched him crack open a can of tuna and gravy. As soon as he peeled the tin back, she began to meow in high-pitched little yips and leapt at his forearm, her white-tipped paws batting the air. 

The bright, squeaky noises were endearing compared to how she used to be. After nearly a week, Nimbus was finally warming up to him. He still felt terrible that she was caged for most hours of the day, except for short breaks like these, but she’d stopped her caterwauling and now slept through the long drives between venues. Each evening, Goku would let her free in the van after soundcheck and overnight at the hotels, much to Nappa’s consternation. Supposedly, the little cat pounced up and down the mountain of a man’s frame all night long, treating him like a jungle gym. But Goku somehow doubted a meathead like Nappa could even feel the tiny beast. She didn’t even weigh two pounds. He just didn’t like cats.

Goku set the can on the floor, and Nimbus leapt from the bench to lick up the smelly, soggy meat. Unlike himself, she was a neat eater, like Chi-Chi in a way. She took tiny bites, careful not to get any sauce on her pretty white maw. Goku dropped his hand to run over her back, and her spine arched against his palm as she began to purr. 

As much as she was beginning to trust him, she’d startle at every muffled shout outside the van doors, whipping her head up from her meal with wide eyes, the slits of her pupils flitting back and forth, and he’d have to coax her attention back down to her meal with snapping fingers and soft, squeaky tones. 

Raising a kitten on the road was a lot of work, more than he expected, but he was managing. It was good practice for the kid he’d be raising a little more than six months from now. But more than that, her needs distracted him from the traveling shit show he was currently trying to weed out of his head. It didn’t matter how much he tried to detangle himself from Raditz and Vegeta’s drama, one of them always seemed to crop up again to twine around his mind and drag him down.

As if on cue, the van door slid open with a bang, and Nimbus darted from her meal to cower under the bench. 

“Raditz, what the hell!? Close the door!”

“You seen Cat and Vegeta?” he asked, oblivious to the sour glare Goku shot at him. 

“No! Go away! Ask Nappa or somethin’!”

“The fuck is your problem?”

“You are! Close the door! The cat’s out.”

Raditz huffed in annoyance and slammed it shut. Goku watched his brother retreat back down the block toward the venue, his thick head darting around the line of concert goers that crowded the sidewalks waiting for the doors to open. 

Ever since Goku stole Vegeta’s stash, Raditz suddenly became his new best friend. He sensed that whatever Raditz told Vegeta at the truck stop that day had everything to do with their new dynamic. Clearly, they were feeding each other’s addictions. Goku lost count how many times he’d been asked by one for the whereabouts of the other. He’d quickly gotten into the habit of pointing in the opposite direction if he did happen to know. They even shared a hotel room every night with that girl, and whatever she was giving them was worse than the pills Goku tossed into the trash. 

As much as he wanted to hate her, he hated himself more. If it weren’t for his rash action, maybe she wouldn’t be traveling with them at all. Raditz would still be begging blow off of fangirls. That wasn’t anything new. It wouldn’t kill him, at least not immediately; though it was sure to in the long haul. Like a cancer, Raditz’s lifestyle would slowly wear him down.

His brother’s love affair with party drugs was something of an art, perfected over the years. It eroded whatever pathetic semblance of brotherly love they might have grown into, and the chasm between them split wider each time Goku tried to intervene. Goku thought that by joining Raditz’s band, he could finally focus his brother’s energy without being quite so blatant as he was in high school. Wishful thinking, perhaps. It quickly became clear that Raditz was either going to grow out of his habits, or he wasn’t. But now… whatever they were taking wasn’t the same hit-it-and-quit-it measure of a good time that Raditz was used to. This was Vegeta’s brand. 

Recognizing the fact made Goku feel even worse. He brought this on. If it weren’t for him, Vegeta would still be in the swing of crushing painkillers up his nose. It wasn’t ideal, but at least those pills were predictable. Knowing Vegeta, he’d probably meticulously counted and rationed them to last the whole tour, only straying from the dosage when he was in a particularly foul mood, which was often enough, but still… at least there was a pattern to it. Whatever new drug he’d adopted left him swinging dramatically up and down the spectrum of human emotion. One minute he was calm, borderline friendly, the next anxious and irritable, and the next completely comatose, slurring in foreign expletives before he’d swing back up the ladder of intensity. He was impossible to predict. 

On top of it, he was doing more drinking and smoking than eating, and his body was paying the price. He’d developed a wicked cough, deep and curdled. Everytime he hacked, Goku would cringe. It was clearly painful, but Vegeta seemed to revel in self punishment. 

He still pushed his vocals on stage. Goku didn’t know how. Even though his singing was rawer than usual, his belted screams felt just as powerful as they’d always been. It was his only therapy, Goku realized. For forty-five minutes every single night, he wasn’t afflicted by anything. Instead, he was empowered, confident without being too cocky. Every once in a while, he even smiled. But the second the lights dimmed, he was gone again. He’d dart offstage before Goku could unplug his instrument, and Raditz would hastily follow, not wanting to miss out on their latest and greatest fixation.

Goku sighed. The kitten wouldn’t come out from her hiding place despite all his kissy-noised coaxing. He gave up, hoping she’d brave it eventually in the returned quiet and retrieved his phone to call Chi-Chi. Besides the shows themselves, timely calls with her were the one thing he most looked forward to. 

Heading into her second trimester, Chi-Chi was on an upswing. She no longer puked up every meal; she slept through most nights, and her energy levels were returning. On top of feeling physically better, her business was taking off too. Besides Saiyans, she had four new bands on her roster. Whis kept his promise to endorse her, and Chi-Chi didn’t fail to deliver. It wouldn’t be long before more bands came begging for Chi-Chi’s level of care. 

Managing an army of immature, hot-headed artists seemed to be exactly what she was born to do. At nineteen, Chi-Chi was younger than most of of the guys she managed, yet Chi-Chi was a hardass, confident and in complete control of them. She ruthlessly negotiated with promoters, publicists, press, and producers, advocating on the bands’ behalf. Goku didn’t doubt that she would have made a good lawyer had she really wanted to be one. Those same skills propelled her in this new profession, one she actually enjoyed and was able to do on her own without putting herself six-figures in debt first. Everytime he called her, his heart swelled listening to her extol her latest and greatest win. 

With her most recent band, some glam metal outfit called The Ginyu Force, she didn’t even have to negotiate much in the deal. Whis respected her enough to write up the contract without the sneaky pitfalls most record executives cuffed on new bands. Chi-Chi suspected that it was less about the band, and more about her. Whis’s generosity always came with a caveat. But in this case, perhaps a well paid one for her benefit, which she was open to hearing should he offer her something worthwhile. 

Despite Napster being offline, the music industry was still in dire straights with all the other sites that popped up in its place. Gods of Destruction was suffering to some extent, but unlike most record executives, Whis never let the digitization and theft of their product get to him. He was so adaptable, he almost embraced it. Hell, he took advantage of torrenting sites to explode Saiyans into the mainstream in the first place with the so-called leak of ‘Cut from the Team’. He was a hype man, a visionary ahead of his time that understood that the music itself was nothing more than marketing so long as he took advantage of other streams of revenue.

According to Chi-Chi, he was buying up verticals, either purchasing or partnering with mid-sized venues, booking agencies, and management firms across the country, ensuring a profit above the sales of the music itself. He was even writing crazy record deals, bartering with bands that didn’t know any better, offering them majority cuts of their royalties in exchange for a slice of everything else—from publishing to merch to touring and endorsements. On the surface, those deals seemed like a dream come true, and maybe they would be so long as the majority of people bought CDs. But at the rate people were burning discs full of illegal downloads, these bands would be kicking themselves a year from now as they forked over hard-earned tour money in exchange for the royalties that never came to fruition. 

Whis was training her. As a former lawyer himself, he knew Chi-Chi was an asset, someone to bring into the fold rather than try to swindle. Goku couldn’t be prouder of his fiancée, and talking to her once a day was a breath of desperately needed air. 

“Hi,” her voice chirped. He could hear the sizzle of food over the line.

“What are you makin’ me?”

“Fried rice! I’m craving spicy food.”

“Still?” Goku was salivating just listening to it cooking. 

“Always, Goku! I’m pregnant. I eat what this little creature inside me demands. Speaking of which, how’s our latest addition to the family? Have you killed it yet?”

“Very funny. She’s alive.” Goku tucked the phone against his shoulder and bent upside down to see the cat’s glowing eyes staring back at him under the bench. “Still kinda skittish, but can’t really blame her. Stuff’s crazy here. There’s no good place to put her.”

Chi-Chi moaned her condolence, but it was overwhelmed by loud whooping shouts. He recognized one of the voices.

“Bulma’s still stayin’ at the apartment?”

“Yeah! She’s been great company. Having her hanging around is like old times, ya know? Today, we went to a high school soccer game. And now we’re hosting Vegeta’s clone for an impromptu Soul Caliber match… apparently.” Goku heard her shuffle her phone, and she whispered into the receiver, “He’s got a mad crush on her, but don’t tell Vegeta.”

“Oh shit!” Goku couldn’t help but laugh. If Vegeta knew his brother had a thing for Bulma, he’d want to meet him just to kick his ass.

“Speaking of the devil, how is he today?” Chi-Chi asked.

“Ugh… I don’t know, Cheech. I’ve been trying to ignore him like you said, but it’s more frustrating doin’ that than carin’ about him outright. Cause I still do care about him even if I’m not actin’ on it. I just worry that avoidin’ him is hurtin’ him, and he’s gonna be harder on himself 'cause of it.”

“Are you reading into it? No offense, Goku, but you like to be liked, and it kills you when someone doesn’t hold the same affinity for you as you do them. Maybe you’re just projecting?”

“You think Vegeta doesn’t like me?” 

What was she trying to say? Was he proving her point just questioning it? Vegeta was his closest friend next to Bulma and Krillin, or at least he thought so. Vegeta was more of a brother to him than Raditz ever was. Creating art with a person was an intimate thing, and since day one, he and Vegeta had a connection he couldn’t explain. As artists, they were perfect for each other. Goku’s bright and flexible, spontaneous spirit melded with Vegeta’s calculated and refined dark pool of energy—the combination of which made for great songs. Whis was exactly right; their yin-yang was a spectacular partnership. But that wasn’t all it was. It was never just business with them. Vegeta _trusted_ him, and Vegeta didn’t trust anyone. That Goku managed the feat at all was a miracle.

Yet he didn’t fully think about that when Chi-Chi suggested that he was maybe enabling Vegeta by caring too much. Her idea that he take a step back seemed right on principle. He shouldn’t be letting Vegeta get into his head and overwhelm everything else going on in his life, especially when it came to the kid that was well on its way. But at the same time, avoiding him was eroding the relationship they both invested so much of themselves in, and for Vegeta, that kind of bond didn’t come easy. Goku’s cold shoulder would only reinforce his distrust in everyone around him. 

Acting like he didn’t care for the past week was eating Goku alive, because he _did_ care. And worse, he could tell that Vegeta was affected by his feigning indifference. He constantly poked at him to evoke a response, staring at Goku across the green room as he pulled a bottle of vodka like it was water. He snorted whatever came around, no longer caring that it made Goku uncomfortable, and their onstage banter became viciously biting, to the point that Goku began to avoid talking to the audience at all between songs, afraid they could tell that Vegeta wasn’t being darkly humorous, but mean. Goku knew he felt betrayed, and it was frustrating him in ways Chi-Chi would never understand. 

“I just mean… He’s an opportunist,” Chi-Chi said. “Maybe he’s been taking advantage of you. You’re a nice person, Goku, and he’s not.”

“Don’t say that, Chi-Chi. He’s your friend too.”

“Is he? Friendship is a two way street. You and Bulma are pushovers. You let Raditz walk all over you too! You realize this, right?”

Goku knew it, but at the same time, he knew abandonment was what Vegeta not only expected from a person, but poked at to prove a point. Vegeta’s mind was so wickedly testing and careful of who he let in that Goku was sure he’d have an easier time being recruited to the CIA than reasserting a spot on Vegeta’s best friend’s list. 

“I just think that me ignorin’ him is worse than takin’ care of him.”

“Just remember that you have priorities, Goku… I don’t mean to sound callous, but Vegeta isn’t your family. You have a son or daughter on the way.”

“Yeah, I know that Chi-Chi.” 

She did sound callous, but he couldn’t say that to her outright without getting reamed. Trying to explain it to her required a kind of careful tact he didn’t possess, especially in the moment. He couldn’t think over the food crackling in the pan and the loud shouts that erupted from Bulma and Tarble over their game.

“Is that Goku?” came Bulma’s voice. “Let me talk to him!”

 _Shit_. He’d been avoiding her calls. She called him every night of tour to milk intel on Vegeta, putting him in the worst possible position, left straddled between two people’s trust. As much as he wanted to tell her the truth, he couldn’t rat Vegeta out like that. Had they been dating still, he would have, no question. Bulma deserved as much. But now that they’d split, Vegeta’s business was his own, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to toe the line between them. Goku didn’t know what else to do besides avoid her. But before he could protest, Chi-Chi gave her the phone.

“Hi buddy! I thought you were dead.”

“Hey Bulma. Just busy is all. Sorry I haven’t returned your calls.”

“You don’t sound sorry, but whatever. It’s fine.” He could picture her rolling her eyes, but the irritation in her voice was mild, as if beside the point. “So! I was thinking… I’m gonna come out with Krillin on Sunday to see you guys in Gingertown.”

“Bulma, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” It was a terrible idea, walking through minefields terrible.

“Don’t worry, Goku. I told Vegeta I’m coming.”

“When?” Somehow he doubted Vegeta would have agreed to see her. Then again, what did he know? He hadn’t spoken more than two words to him all week.

“This morning. I texted him.” 

The obvious question of whether or not Vegeta responded to her message was left hanging on his lips as Tarble interrupted, his eerily similar voice nearly pressed against the line, like he was hanging over Bulma’s shoulder. 

“Oh shit, I wanna come!” 

“No fucking way, kid.” Bulma spat. “Taking a minor across state lines without his parents permission is called kidnapping.”

“ _Tch._ I’ll get their permission… easy!” 

Kami, he sounded so much like Vegeta that Goku shook his head, half expecting Vegeta himself to appear next to him. The question of his little brother’s existence was solidified in that voice, and a whole new line of anxiety split his mind wide open. Goku knew that Vegeta wouldn’t exactly welcome the kid with open arms. The question was what, exactly, he would do if he encountered his long lost sibling in his state of mind, and what would the kid do? If Tarble was anything like Vegeta, they’d be two pitbulls from the same litter thrown into the ring. Except Tarble wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Bullshit!” Bulma chided. “Tarble, it’s technically a school night, and Vegeta doesn’t like surprises.”

“So, I’ll call him. Gimme his number.”

“Hell no!”

Thankfully, Goku and Bulma agreed on the subject, though not entirely. “Bulma, honestly I don’t think either of you should come.”

“Zip it, Goku. What the hell are you afraid of, huh?”

Besides Bulma discovering that Vegeta had been hooking up with randoms up and down the coast? That for the past week, he was barely conscious much of the time to the point that he couldn’t spell his own name, and when he was awake, he was so amped that everyone around him walked on eggshells, ready to duck a swing? Not that he could deliver anything punishing. He was sick and weak and all his smack talk was waved aside as if it’d been boasted by an angry toddler. 

“I’m not afraid, Bulma. Look, you don’t need my permission. I just think you should get his. That’s all.”

“Come off it, Goku. I think I know how to handle Vegeta.”

“I’m not saying you don’t. It’s just that he’s kinda stressed right now. All this Icejin stuff is getting to him is all.”

“About that!”

Oh fuck… Goku clapped a hand over his mouth as the fluids drained from his skull. What did he just say? Did he hint to the fact that Zarbon’s arrest had anything to do with Vegeta himself? See, this is why he shouldn’t be talking to her about him. Keeping secrets was not his strong suit.

“Two more people have come forward against Zarbon, and I keep telling Chi-Chi she should too! Make sure that creep doesn’t see the light of day,” Bulma said.

“Wait… what!?” All the blood in his body quickly surged back up between his temples, and he could hear Chi-Chi screeching at Bulma to give her the phone, her voice ringing in his ears.

“Goku!” Chi-Chi’s breathless voice shook him just barely from his impending rage. The other sounds in the room slowly faded as she retreated down the hallway for privacy. 

“What’s she talking about?”

“It was nothing! It was back in October when we were broken up. He was at Duffs, and Bulma thinks he slipped something in my drink.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me? Come on, Chi-Chi. Are you serious?”

His fiancée’s usual confidence was rattled. Her voice broke at a pitch he wasn’t accustomed to as she begged, “I’m sorry! Please don’t make a big deal about it. Bulma and Turles were there with me. I was fine. Nothing happened. I swear!”

It was a big deal! Zarbon tried to drug her, and his best friend and cousin knew about it and never said anything? _She_ never said anything?

“Chi-Chi what the hell?”

“Goku, please don’t freak out.”

“Are you kidding me? Chi-Chi, why didn’t you tell me?” 

Not freaking out was no longer a possibility, not now that two of the closest people in his life were attacked by the same predators, refusing to talk to anyone that could actually lock them away. Chi-Chi had been a kami-damned lawyer in training. Surely she could understand that brushing the act aside was a failure on her part in getting due justice. But maybe the incident to her was too far removed. It was one night, and she obviously skirted the consequences to the point that she brushed the whole thing aside as if it never happened. To Chi-Chi, it was a minor incident, one she’d avoided and almost forgotten, more trouble than it was worth to prosecute, much less tell Goku about. But that’s not how it worked out for Vegeta.

Frieza was still out there, a skulking hunter, waiting to ambush him the moment his guard was down. It was only thanks to Nappa’s commitment to playing guard dog, and Raditz, albeit unwittingly protecting him too by hanging around, that Vegeta wasn’t put in the same position he’d been in a week ago. Nobody had seen Frieza since, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still around biding his time, waiting for the right moment for his so-called revenge. 

Goku had to stop himself from cracking his knuckles. If the charges against Zarbon didn’t stick, he’d be hard pressed to keep from retaliating. In that way, he understood Vegeta’s desire to break skulls over talking. Going through the legal process, putting his story out there for everyone to hear was far more difficult than vigilante justice. He’d be laying himself bare to ridicule and looking weak.

That was Vegeta’s problem. He didn’t want to answer questions about _why_ because he couldn't explain them in a way anyone with two brain cells could understand.… why did he let himself succumb to to their abuse over and over without leaving the band? He was so arrogant in every way. How did he let it happen, not just once but on repeat? Vegeta had seven years to explain. That’s how long it took to reach his breaking point. Goku himself couldn't understand why Vegeta stayed, why it took so long to fight back in any meaningful way. He’d always fought them, physically at least. He was notorious for that, but he never stopped them. He stayed. He fucking hung around in close quarters with Icejin for seven fucking years, like some cult baby that didn’t know any better. The whole thing was fucking disturbing and proved just how sad his life was.

“Goku, I’m not proud of it, but please, can we just forget it happened?” Chi-Chi’s voice cut through this train of thought.

“No, Chi-Chi. I get if you don’t want to talk to the cops. I really do understand that. But I don’t think it’s the right decision, and whatever you decide, I’m not gonna let it slide. He tried to hurt you!”

“But he didn’t. That’s what I’m trying to explain.”

“Only because you were lucky enough to have friends looking out for you. Chi-Chi, I can’t tell you how intense this whole Icejin thing is for us right now. I wish I could, but I know that if you agree to say something on the record, it would mean a lot…for a lot of people.” 

“Goku, I can’t. Can you imagine what my clients would think? Besides, the whole thing has Whis on edge. I can’t just go talking to the press and ruin my career over one dumb night. It would destroy him… and us!”

“Talk about opportunists, Chi-Chi. Whis isn’t looking out for you.”

“Of course not! Not everyone is as noble as you are, Goku. That’s business. I’m playing the game. I’m not worried about one stupid night where nothing happened, so why are you?”

“Because it’s not one stupid night! You were lucky, Chi-Chi. And so many others weren’t. You can’t just brush this aside like it didn’t happen.”

“Well, I’m not responsible for them, and neither are you!”

“But I am.” Goku sipped a deep breath, hoping it would stop him from betraying Vegeta’s trust any further, but if Chi-Chi wasn’t going to support him without knowing the truth, it was a risk worth taking. They were practically family now, and he wasn’t about to let her bulldoze the hard won friendship he’d earned. So he told her Vegeta’s story, right down to every last detail.

***

Being a Sunday morning, the train station was free of its ordinary workday hustle. It’s long platforms were dotted with mostly families pushing strollers and college students coming home from their weekend getaways, lugging rollarboards behind them. Bulma spotted Krillin immediately on the eastbound platform, his bald head bent over his phone.

“Hey buddy!” 

The train was already late, and they’d barely make it in time for the guys to play even if it were on schedule. Bulma prayed that there wouldn’t be any more delays. Taking the train was far more unreliable than flying, but she was looking forward to spending time with Krillin, not having done so one-on-one since high school. On top of the fact that splurging on a flight made her feel spoiled. 

“Hey Bulma!” he said without glancing up. “One sec.”

Bulma leaned over his paws to see him battling the borders in an intense game of Snake.

“Don’t fuck up!” she shouted.

“Fuck!” Immediately he did. “Dammit Bulma!” He laughed and tucked his phone away. “It’s been a while, huh?” Krillin grinned. “Eighteen’s buying some shit for the road. She’ll be right back.”

“Oh… Eighteen’s coming?” Bulma tried to hide her annoyance behind a stale smile.

Of course, Eighteen was coming. Supposedly, she _liked_ Krillin, and there was no reason to hate her anymore. She’d proven many times that she wasn’t still in love with Vegeta, if she ever had been. But she always treated Bulma like some second-rate hoe, a one night stand whose bed he lingered in for far too long. Every conversation they’d ever had was laced with the haughty expertise of an ex-wife scorned. Eighteen acted like nobody could ever know Vegeta the way she did, and Bulma was some laughable fool for trying. Perhaps she’d be different now. Bulma hadn’t seen her since their altercation at Duffs. 

More than once in the past month Bulma’s thumb tapped against her phone, ready to take the high road and call her to debrief the event, woman-to-woman. But she never did, afraid that Eighteen would be only too happy to rub in the fact that Vegeta had contacted her that night to hook-up, if that’s what happened.

The train whistle blew a warning as it pulled up to the tracks. While she and Krillin waited for the incoming passengers to disembark, Eighteen trotted up to where they stood, a stack of magazines clung against her chest. She barely proffered a glance in Bulma’s direction and leaned to kiss Krillin on the lips right in front of her. Not in a showy way, but in the simple, almost habitual fashion of an old, married couple. The act took Bulma aback, and she quickly washed the stunned look off her face before she greeted the girl.

“Hey,” Bulma said as they made their way to board the train. 

Eighteen only lifted her eyebrows in mute acknowledgment. They followed Krillin through the car to find a free booth, and Bulma sat across from the lovebirds, hoping the eight hour ride to Gingertown would pass without any awkward vibes. Why the fuck Eighteen decided to come at all was a mystery. Sure, she was technically the band’s rep, and maybe she just wanted to see Krillin off before he disappeared for two months, but at the same time, her beef with Vegeta seemed like some boss level drama. And Bulma couldn’t help but wonder if she was really there to settle the score. Eighteen got a hit in, but their tab was still woefully left unsettled. Perhaps she needed to close it for good. She couldn't fault a girl for that.

Bulma watched the couple discreetly over the top of her cell phone as the train car filled out. Either she was delirious at 10am after Chi-Chi decided that sharing was caring when it came her pregnancy-induced insomnia, or Eighteen was actually smiling and joking around with another human being… genuinely. There was no biting sarcasm, no stony indifference, no challenging testament the girl was prone to uphold to save face or whatever it was that normally held Eighteen to her stiff cool. She seemed almost… happy? 

Bulma had barely acclimated to this new glow on the woman when Eighteen’s attention jerked away from Krillin in an instant. Her entire face contracted, as if snapped back to the cold, imperturbable glacier that was her trademark, at least as far as Bulma knew her. 

“Hello,” a familiar raspy voice sounded at Bulma’s side.

She followed Eighteen’s bewildered, frosty glare to its source as the boy slipped into the empty seat beside her. 

“What the fuck, Tarble! Why are you here?” Bulma twisted to face the insolent brat. 

“Jesus, Bulma you sure have a type,” Eighteen sneered.

“He’s leaving!” Bulma piped, but just as she spoke the train rattled to life, and the platform outside the window shifted away, leaving the shithead to grin between the three of them victoriously. 

“Sup?” the teen flicked his chin and extended a hand across the booth toward Eighteen, which the girl took with a dramatic twist of her eyebrows.

“Tarble,” Bulma sighed his name at the dumbstruck couple, “This is Krillin and Eighteen. Guys, this is Vegeta’s little brother… obviously.” 

“Holy shit!” Krillin exclaimed. “No kidding!”

Tarble’s wicked smirk grew wider. Kami, he was Vegeta in every way, besides being organically happy. Eighteen was left speechless as she clasped his hand. The fucker winked at her! And Eighteen dropped his palm like a hot potato to run her fingers through her hair and pretend to look out the window. Krillin’s smile faded to glare at him across the table. 

“Tarble?” Bulma grinned at the brat calmly, trying to bury the fact that she wanted to punch the smile from his stupid face. “Can I talk to you privately?”

“Sure, Bulma.” He hopped up from the booth and dumped his backpack in his place. He strutted down the aisle ahead of her toward an empty vestibule, whipping around to face her with a cocky grin splayed across his lips.

“What the fuck are you doing here? I told you–”

“It’s fine. I have permission. You’ve got nothin’ to worry about,” he said with a casual pop of his shoulders.

“Except Vegeta. Tarble you don’t understand. He’s not chomping at the bit to meet you! Shit, he probably doesn’t want to see me! If I got your hopes up, I’m sorry, but he’s–”

“It’s fine. I don’t care. I’m not desperate. He is!” The teen shrugged again, but the fact that he felt the need to declare that at all contradicted his bold claim.

“He’s the opposite, I assure you.” Bulma tried to enlighten him without bruising his ego, which already proved to be genetic. Kami, the kid was turning out to be more than she’d bargained for, not that she was surprised. He was an Ouji after all, and like his brother, he was all-consuming, putting up an arrogant front to bury something darker. 

“Tch.. Whatever. Look, I have nothin’ to lose. And I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“Unfortunately, yes you are.”

“Then fuck it. It’s an eight hour ride, Bulma. Buy me a beer?”

“Fuck off brat!” Ugh... This was going to be a long ass ride. “I feel like we should call your parents.”

“Trust me, Bulma. They don’t give a fuck where I am right now,” he assured her, dropping his smile with a look that was almost void of emotion—a look that had Vegeta written all over it, and Bulma felt her heart wrench for the kid. “Unless the school calls them tomorrow, which I’ve taken care of, they won’t even notice I’m gone.”

From the moment she met him, she sensed that his cushy life wasn’t exactly what it seemed. In the week she spent with him, he spoke about his parents as if they were nothing more than landlords, and he had no affinity for them at all. He was so independent already at his age, and was only too anxious to turn eighteen and live on his own. Bulma had heard of the prestigious Asuna family often. They were both wealthy investment bankers who had a finger on every big business in West City. Capsule Corp projects too, from time to time. It was strange now, knowing that they were Tarble’s parents. She didn’t doubt that they’d been to many of their company parties, or that her own parents had attended his. 

“You don’t like them, do you?”

“I don’t dislike them…” he shrugged. 

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m a rogue agent, Bulma. I always have been.” Shit, this kid was as elusive as his brother, skirting around her questions like his life was a trade secret.

“Oh, fuck off brat.” 

“Fuck off what?” Tarble’s brows pinched together and he cocked his head. His long lost sibling was writ all over his face. Vegeta was in his mannerisms, in the sound of his voice, even in his vocabulary. They’d never met, but It was almost like they’d grown up together, tied by some strange cosmic shoestring. Now that she had the kid going, his mouth ran faster than Vegeta’s on molly. 

“You know they’ve never asked me once what my favorite movie is? My favorite song? My favorite color? My favorite anything? My memories as a kid aren’t full of precious family photo moments. They barely talk to me; as a kid they talked _about_ me to whatever hired help was currently in charge of making sure I was properly indoctrinated to their hypocritical religious education. Did you spend every fucking summer sitting in the penalty box at bible camp because your parents thought you’d be a burden hanging around when school was out? They’ve never showed up at one fucking soccer game, not once. They’re not normal parents. And I’m not technically their son. I’m a tax write-off, and I’m good for PR. Nothing more.”

“Are you exaggerating? My parents aren’t that involved in my life either.”

She didn’t doubt that he was telling the truth of his perspective, but perhaps he was blowing it out of proportion to stoke her sympathy. Despite that she knew there was a difference in her parents giving her and sister a wide berth to be independent and Tarble being ignored, yet still strictly subjected to his parents’ system of beliefs.

“Do you want to know what happened when they told me my mother was pregnant? I believe the words ‘destiny’ and ‘God’s miraculous fucking gift’ were tossed around. _Finally_ , they were blessed! Do you want to know what happened when I accidentally bruised one of their precious spawn doing what kids do with their so-called siblings?”

“No. I’m afraid,” she said, seeing the miserable look on his face.

“Or what they said to me when the academy threatened to expel me for being a ‘heathen’? Their definition…” 

No, she didn’t. She wanted to remove that look from his face. She wanted him to smile again. Kami, the fucker was just as talented in the art of manipulation as his brother. “Okay. Shut up. I get it. Goddammit, why are you Oujis so fucking cursed?”

“Maybe I should change my name back to what it was. Embrace the curse.”

“You should, kid. If it will make you feel better. Look, I just don’t want to get your hopes up for something that might not be what you think it is. Vegeta’s not easy.”

Tarble’s brows turned together, determined, as if he’d been spinning the thought over in his mind for days. “I don’t care. He’s my real family, you know? I don’t have anybody else. If I don’t do what they want, then the second I turn eighteen, they’ll disown me. I mean… that’s what they say.”

“Tarble, I don’t think you should do what they want if it doesn’t fit. Whatever you want to do with your life, you should own it. You’re smart, and you don’t need their approval or their money. But at the same time, I won’t lie to you that this Vegeta thing might be a pipe dream, and now you’re making me feel guilty for introducing you to something that might never be.”

Fuck, he was breaking her heart. He was just as damaged as his brother, hopelessly searching for a family that had escaped him. Bulma didn’t know which was worse, knowing their biological mother and having her torn away with nothing left but the carnage of war and her image in pictures, or growing up without any understanding whatsoever of that kind of love. They needed each other, and Bulma was actually glad that Tarble came. Whether Vegeta agreed was another story.

“Come on. You’re here now. We might as well make the best of it.” Bulma grabbed his hand and led him back to their seats, shooting down his requests for alcohol with a motherly tone that felt foreign on her lips. 

He spent the majority of the ride on his Game Boy Advance with Eighteen leering at him over the top of her magazine. Every once in a while, when they’d catch eyes, he’d grin, and she’d quickly dart her gaze away. At least the kid was entertaining. Another trait he shared with his brother was his ability to get blonde girls to wet themselves over his fuckboy charms. Except that unlike Vegeta, Tarble was shameless about it. Where Vegeta played hard to get, Tarble played hard. Not that Eighteen was falling for the act. She seemed more disturbed by baby Vegeta than anything else, like he was some alien that was beamed down to fuck with her specifically. After her displays of affection with Krillin, Eighteen, Bulma guessed, wanted nothing more than to wipe her mainframe of any lingering bits of Vegeta’s memory, and his brother unfortunately served as a fresh upload of everything she disdained. His subtle winks and grins at her were frying her nerves, and she kept shifting in her seat, like she was about to blow a circuit. 

Krillin was passed out against the window when Bulma left for the restroom, and Eighteen got up from her seat to follow ten feet behind. Bulma didn’t think anything of it. But after doing her business as she slid open the door, the girl was blocking her exist and pushed herself inside. 

“Fuck, Eighteen! What the hell are you doing?” Bulma cried as the girl slammed the door shut behind her and locked it. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know he was coming. Kid think’s he’s hot shit, and he’s trying to get a rise out of you.”

“Oh can it, Bulma. Getting eye-fucked by every Tom, Dick and Harry is part of my job description.” She snapped, which left Bulma without a guess as to what had her panties in a wad if not Tarble.

“Read this.” Eighteen thrust a magazine into her hands.

“Browbeater? Why?” Bulma scanned the cover. It was an image of Icejin wearing silver devil masks. Not incriminating, really. It looked like promo unless one read the large headline: _Guilty as Hell_ in bold, white letters. But it was the subheading that caught Bulma’s attention: _Sex scandal heightens as victims come forward, but Vegeta Ouji stays quiet despite new evidence_. 

“Why should he say anything? He wasn’t involved in that right? Please tell me he had nothing to do with it. He wasn’t hurting people too, right?” Holy shit…she suddenly felt sick and grabbed the handicap handle on the wall to steady the pitch of her stomach. If Eighteen was about to tell her that Vegeta was a part of the scandal… “No fucking way,” she cried. “He wouldn't hurt anybody. They’re lying.” Yet, the vivid memory of him swinging back his arm to hit Eighteen was all too present.

“Kami, don’t be an idiot.” Eighteen tore the magazine from her hand and flipped through the pages to the feature story. “Just fucking read it.”

Bulma scanned the text below his stupid, smirking mugshot. She already knew he was arrested on drug charges with court mandated rehab as punishment. Supposedly, young girls across the country were printing off the bad boy image to tape on their bedroom walls. Barf. But as she read these new details, at the fresh evidence surrounding his arrest and what it suggested, her eyes widened and her jaw went slack as she digested a story that was almost as horrible as her original train of thought. He was a part of it all right, but he was the victim? 

If she had words to express on the subject, they were stuck at the back of her throat, as if dislodging them to breathe between her lips would make them true. There was no fucking way. He was so tough, so confident. Yet he was so messed up at the same time. The moment her head flooded with the fog of denial, all of the truths about him seemed to peek through a curtain of smoke and dissipate it with every churn of rational thought. The enigma of Vegeta Ouji started to take a solid shape from the haze. All his fronting, overly arrogant and untrusting persona made sense. His self-destructive, borderline suicidal tendencies weren’t just baked in post-war trauma; he was traumatized far longer and far worse than the night bombs were dropped on his home. He succumbed to those particular wounds the day he went to the airport at thirteen with every intention to leave for Saiya and changed his mind. That day, Vegeta accepted he was on his own for the rest of his life. He’d never get back what he lost, and he was stuck here in a foreign country, alone. By the time he joined Icejin, he already expected the worst. That’s what Bulma understood now. And that knowledge was what bothered her the most, realizing that it was probably too easy for them to take advantage of him. 

“It was published this morning,” Eighteen said. 

“And you knew about it?”

“No. Not like you think. When we were dating, he was… affected. But I didn’t know why, not until the press conference at the release show. He was always a little crazy, and… fiesty, to put it mildly. At least now it makes sense, and I don’t blame him. I don’t hate him as much anymore. This publication in particular had the intel to out him, but they waited until now. I think Whis stopped them. I also think Whis outed him to begin with. Confidential source my ass.”

Bulma’s mind reeled. “Why would Whis do that?” 

“Publicity. He’s got a knack for dramatic marketing ploys, but this one happened to spiral out of his control.” 

“But it’s true?”

Eighteen nodded, confirming what she suspected already. “He never told you?” she asked, matter-of-fact, like she wasn’t surprised.

“Of course not! He told _you_?” Bulma couldn’t help the nasty tone laced in her voice. It was difficult to digest that Vegeta would tell Eighteen something so critically damaging and personal and not her. As stupid as it was to harp on jealousy under the circumstance, she couldn’t help it. The idea that he trusted Eighteen with that kind of insight into who he was felt like a sucker punch, like she’d been batting this whole time with one arm tied behind her fucking back. 

“He didn’t tell me. Not the way you think. Bulma, if you’re gonna be mad at him for something, this isn’t it.” Eighteen said, as if she could read her mind.

“Then why didn’t he tell _me_?”

“You know why,” she sneered. “He’s the cockiest, most insecure person on the planet. His shoe comes untied, and he’ll fucking blush about it and punch the guy next to him and claim he stepped on his fucking foot.”

Bulma snorted, and Eighteen’s lips turned up at her own joke. 

“ _I’m_ telling you now, Bulma. I’m not a bitch. I really do want him to be happy. And I’m glad you make him happy. I wasn’t keeping anything from you on purpose. Goku didn’t tell you either, and he knew, so again… I’m not a bitch. We’re all trying. I know what happened at Duffs looked bad. I didn’t mean to hit him, but I just couldn’t take his fucking selfish mind warp… You’ve gotta understand _this_ is what I was dealing with!” She whacked the magazine. “But I didn’t fucking know it at the time. I just dealt with the aftermath.” 

“I know you aren’t a bitch. Eighteen, I’m sorry too for treating you like one.” They’d gotten off on the wrong foot, and Eighteen wasn’t exactly a people person, not enough to ease Bulma’s mind before she said something now. But Eighteen did know Vegeta much longer, as much as Bulma didn’t want to admit. As hard as it was to ask his ex-girlfriend for advice, under the circumstance, Bulma swallowed her pride. “What do I do?”

“Funny, that’s what I came to ask you. I was hoping you’d have an answer.”

“An answer? To this?” Bulma asked, shaking the magazine in her fist.

“Well… Whether he admits it or not, he’s in love with you. If you leave now-”

“I’m not gonna leave him,” she interjected. 

He needed one person to stick around. Despite all the energy he channeled into keeping his distance, all the horrible things he did, especially to her, in an effort to keep anyone from infiltrating his bubble of self-destruction, she wasn’t going away. 

_Unconditional_ , that was the mantra she told not just him, but herself. He was so quick to storm anyone that threatened to cross his moat, that once she got inside, she built-up her own defenses to stop him from catapulting her right back over. He tried. From the information Goku failed to hide, Vegeta was desperate. Through all his binges and one-night-stands, he was making a point to pitch her out. He wanted her to leave him alone the way an old pet retreated below the deck to die. 

“I promised I wouldn’t. And I still love him too.”

“That’s good,” Eighteen said. “That’s a good fucking start.”


	30. Watch Me Hit the Bottom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this is chapter 30! We've finally reached the last act... which means there's still probably ten or so chapters to go. Lol. I don't know how to NOT drag things out. It's getting a little harder to write now that the psychological stuff is taking center stage, so sorry for the delays!!
> 
> Thanks to [bitchytimemachine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitchytimemachine) and [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) for beta reading!!
> 
> Also, I'm very excited about these cuties [Starrcrossrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrcrossrose/) drew! I wanna hug theeeem.
> 
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How many Saiyans did it take to navigate a small town’s pathetic, little ten by ten block city center, Vegeta wondered.

“Can’t ya just go around the block?”

“What the fuck you think I’m doin’ Kakarot?” Nappa snapped. His fat finger flicked off the music, just as Vegeta keyed a bump of dope up his nostril with an all too recognizable sniff. “Seriously, Kid? You think we can’t fucking hear you?”

He didn’t bother responding. Listening to the two ineffectual morons whine over an outdated map to locate the venue was doing his head in. He deserved a bump just for putting up with their navigational impediments in a town that was smaller than a box of cracker jacks.

His phone began to buzz inside the cup holder, again. It was the third time today that Vados had tried calling, and he didn’t pick up. If she was chasing past due invoices, she could fuck right off. He wasn’t exactly flush with cash at the moment. Hell, even if he lived to be a hundred, no matter how many records Icejin and Saiyans sold above what both bands owed in recoupment, he’d take her debt to the grave. Good lawyers were not cheap.

“Goddammit Kid! Answer the fucking thing or turn it off!” Nappa bellowed.

Screw him. Again, Vegeta didn’t respond. Instead, he opened the window and chucked the phone into the ditch.

“Real fucking mature!”

Their narrowed eyes met in the rearview mirror with mutual disdain.

“It’s right there!” Kakarot looked up from the weathered booklet in his lap to point through the windshield. “Wait…” he paused, “Do we have a press conference today?”

“What in the hell?” Nappa muttered, pulling is gaze from Vegeta’s to stare at the road ahead.

Vegeta shifted to peer between the front seats to see what the dopes were gawking at. A horde of press trucks were parked along the street. Their large crews with big, broadcast cameras crowded the sidewalk in front of the venue. It made no sense. Why the fuck would a small town show have a professional gaggle of vultures swarming the club’s front doors? No sooner did his mind ask the question when, suddenly, he connected the dots between his lawyer’s missed calls and the mess of press hacks taking up residence in a piss-ant place like Gingertown.

The pleasant blast of heroin he’d just shot into his skull was instantly smothered, replaced by a flood of panic that paralyzed his bulging eyes and closed off any conscious thought or rational action. In the back of his mind, he knew his luck was running out, that the story had been teetering on the edge of publication since the release show, and that Zarbon’s arrest would only launch it into the open. Only he never fully digested the fact until now that it was lancing him through the center, sharp as a pike driven up his spine—a fresh carcass prepped to parade up to Hell’s front doors with those ghouls as his pallbearers. His entire body stiffened as his eyes screamed for him to blink. He was fucked. He was _so_ fucking fucked. _Breathe_ some tiny, automatic command whispered at the back of his skull, the only voice he could latch onto. It begged him to run.

The van was stopped at a light, and Vegeta’s limbs moved as if they were unattached to himself. He slid open the door and hopped to the curb.

Nappa’s neck snapped backward. “Where the hell are you going?”

“I need my phone!”

“You’re a fucking idiot!”

“Do you want us to wait?” Kakarot asked.

“No.” Vegeta slammed the door shut.

“Guess we’ll meet you out back,” Kakarot muttered dully out his open window.

Vegeta had to give it to him. The tone in Kakarot’s voice gave it away; he knew Vegeta had no intention in going back. He had to hide. For the rest of his miserable life he’d have to hide from everyone. His secret had been excavated, and now, every gossip-mongering shit-tard on the planet was feasting on his shame like maggots on a fresh corpse, making headlines on his stupid, teenage brain’s inability to react in a way that made any sense to anyone that wasn’t him.

But they weren’t him. They had no clue what led him to endure what he did, what it was like waking up day after day knowing it might feasibly end with him being a toy for Frieza to play with. Their commentary would be some biting, ignorant analyses on cult logic or his war-torn past, his broken psyche or his addictions. Everyone would wonder why he didn’t do anything to stand up for himself, to save himself until it was too late. Any of their theories, they wouldn’t be wrong to speculate. He couldn’t explain it even to himself except in those same terms that now, since he’d escaped it, should have felt wholly misguided and incomplete, but didn’t. Somewhere deep down, he thought he deserved it—that every miserable circumstance that befell him time and time again was an effect of his mere existence. He was the common denominator, the crux of everyone’s pain, if not their demise. He shouldn’t have been born at all.

With his hoodie pulled over his head, he strode away from the venue and plucked his cell phone from the ditch. He kept right on walking, hoping to find somewhere to lay low and contemplate his next move.

There were plenty of bars in the town’s condensed little metro. He just needed to locate one where he wasn’t likely to be recognized. A small country dive seemed promising. When he glanced inside, besides an old bartender was just one other middle-aged patron. They both gave him odd looks when he pulled a stool to scuff along the tile and plopped down at the weathered counter, apparently incapable of even getting a damned drink without making a scene. He was hopeless.

Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ hummed quietly over the speakers, and the bartender nodded along as he dropped a cardboard coaster in front of him.

“What’s your poison?” the man asked. He was skinny, wiry, with short grey hair that poked out from the sides of his baseball cap. His tan, leathery skin suggested he’d spent his life cooking in the southern sun rather than trapped in a dark, dank bar.

“Whiskey. A double, whatever you’ve got,” Vegeta mumbled, pulling at the edge of his hood to shroud his face as the man next to him made no attempt to hide his scrutinizing examination.

The old bartender gave him a generous pour, more than double, and Vegeta downed the dark liquid in one, swift gulp and slid the glass back toward him. A bushy eyebrow lifted over the man’s eye, but he refilled it without prompting.

“You must be with that punk outfit at the Palace Theater,” he said.

“Punk outfit?” the other man snorted. His sausage fingers were wrapped around a bottle of Bud Light that he guzzled as he continued to peer at Vegeta over his thick, grey beard.

“Saiyans they’re called. All the kids are talking about it. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice all them kids in town.”

The other man shook his head and twisted his beer belly from where it’d been wedged against the bar to get a better look at him. “Guess you kinda seem of like one of them. Sorta small though. I thought you Saiyans were supposed to be big brutes.”

Vegeta shrugged and swallowed his shot with a wince, trying his best to swallow any budding animosity along with it that made him feel like a child. Forget Saiyans, he was small compared to everyone. It was always the spark that ignited his rage as a kid—the catalyst that eventually evicted him from dozens of group homes whenever he’d be forced to prove just how small he wasn’t. He didn’t need reminding now.

“You all got them creepy, black eyes?” the man asked, leaning toward him as if trying to catch a glimpse.

“They’re not black.” Vegeta averted his gaze. Of course, if he wasn’t going to be recognized he’d still have to put up with some ignorant fuck's racial profiling. “Dark brown, if you’re really that interested.”

“Near black,” the man mumbled.

“Ignore him,” the bartender said. “He’s never seen a foreigner.”

“I’m _not_ a foreigner. I grew up in North City.”

“To me, that’s foreign,” the man next to him said. He downed the rest of his beer and slammed the bottle against the bar, still facing Vegeta from his periphery.

“Whatever, dude.” Vegeta had no patience for the ignoramus. If he hated immigrants, the ethos this country was built upon, that was his problem. But if he kept running his mouth, Vegeta wasn’t so sure he could keep himself in check. 

“What do you play?” asked the bartender as if trying to diffuse the tension.

“What do I play? Everything? Punk, metal, indie, I dunno.”

“I mean instrument, what do you play?”

Why the hell was he asking? Was this some small-town, honky-tonk thing to harp on his ethnicity and interrogate him for a drink? He was already on the brink of psychosis before he walked into the place, seeking an escape from his fucked-up thoughts, only to be pinned by insults and small-minded chatter.

“Uh... guitar… keys?”

“You not sure?”

“I play the guitar and the fucking piano! What of it?” he snapped.

“Nothin’! Just a question.” The man lifted his palms in defense. “You take lessons or something?”

“Tch… I taught myself.”

“Impressive!” He nodded earnestly, not mocking the way Vegeta expected. “I play the guitar too, and the fiddle. Self-teaching ain’t exactly easy, so good on you.” He lowered his hands slowly, sensing his edge, and poured Vegeta another drink. It seemed questioning strangers really was a pastime in this place. The man didn’t appear to hold any ulterior motive beyond a pointless conversation, and Vegeta relaxed somewhat as he took the shot.

“Who did it for ya? For me it was Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard...”

Vegeta shrugged. It was a stupid question he was always asked by the press and was trained to spout off metal behemoths like Amon Amarth, Napalm Death, Pantera, or Megadeath, despite that none of them were the tunes he popped into his headphones anymore. In his early teens, of course, heavy metal and hardcore punk was all he lived and breathed. But these days, his nerves couldn’t stand it. He listened to fucking Zero 7, the Postal Service, and Air. But back then when he was learning how to play…

“My mother, I guess. She was a classical pianist, and she taught me the basics, but I dunno. As a kid, I liked Van Halen and Steve Vai and Bob Dylan ‘cause he sung about shit that mattered.”

“Bob Dylan, huh?” the bartender’s tone seemed skeptical, and the baboon to Vegeta’s right tisked with similar discord.

“Fuck you guys. The man’s a poet.” Sure, maybe he wasn’t the greatest vocalist, but they were idiots if they didn’t agree that every damned verse the man penned wasn’t brilliant.

“If you say so…” the bartender flicked his chin dubiously as he poured him another drink. “Don’t know what poetry’s got to do with it.”

Was he kidding? “It’s got everything to do with it! I can compose songs no problem, but it’s the lyrics everybody’s singing, right? That was his charm. He was a great composer, but he was a fucking genius lyricist, wasn’t he?” Vegeta didn’t know why he was running his mouth, defending his childhood inspirations to some old hillbillies, but it was a distraction, and so long as the man kept refilling his glass, he’d talk all night about music.

“All right,” the bartendter nodded. “So, you fancy yourself a lyricist?”

“No, not at all. I’m not anything.”

That much was true. He was an amalgamation of random intake. Everyone knew him as the Icejin Baby, some death metal cloak he couldn’t seem to shed—a sound that was dark, thick and resonant. Metal was as complicated as classical music, or at least the good stuff was, and throughout his teens, he held it to that acclaim, reveling in the reviews of Icejin’s records, particularly those that expounded on his skill in composition.

After a while the feeling wore off, and no matter how many awards were shipped to the GODs’ headquarters, the music still felt empty. He could shred up and down the scales, his fingers floating across the frets effortlessly as a teen, so what? It was intricate, technically challenging, but it was impersonal like calculus. It wasn’t poetry, and worse, it had a small market. That’s when he began to adapt their music for the mainstream. Of course, Icejin’s diehard fans called him a sellout.

He’d been writing his own music all along, stuff that was simple, focused on the message, the lyrics, essentially. The unpublished notebooks Chi-Chi had in her possession meant more to him than all of Icejin’s gold records combined. Some of those songs he used for Saiyans, and they catapulted him into the caste of Emo poster boy. It wasn’t sophisticated music, not anything that remotely approached the complicated noise of Icejin, but it was _his_. The lyrics were his too, and it’s what they all were singing. But it wasn’t poetry in an artistic sense. Not anything that would be remembered ten years from now. It was the melodramatic whine of a spoiled generation. It was the sound of an indignant, angry child that hated the world because he lacked the capacity to thrive in it. By now, that’s what everybody knew and for what he’d be remembered.

The bartender’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Didn’t you just say you were a guitarist and a pianist? Bob Dylan was those things too if I’m not mistaken.”

“Well… Good for him. I’m not anything near as good,” Vegeta said, quickly tearing his gaze away to stare at his fingers as he spun an empty shot glass between them. Goddammit, this was _not_ the direction he expected a musical heart to heart to go. Comparing himself to his idols wasn’t going to help him climb out of the sinkhole his mind was stuck in. I’d only make it worse.

“I think a couple thousand kids in this town would disagree that you’re not as good,” he said. “Hell, most of these kids don’t know who Bob Dylan is…” he chuckled.

In a way, the man wasn’t wrong… Vegeta skipping out on the show was going to disappoint a sold-out concert of more than two-thousand paying fans, but he couldn’t bring himself to face them, nor anyone after the story came out. Nobody would be looking at him like he was the next Bob Dylan or Eddie Van Halen or even Vegeta of Icejin or Saiyans. They’d be staring at him like he was pathetic, some victim to be pitied, some stupid kid that was damaged and weak and couldn’t stand up for himself. Because that was the truth, he never could stand up for himself the way he needed to, and the moment he did, too little too late, he was threatened with a prison sentence. Despite avoiding that fate, he was still branded. Like the scars along his arm, Frieza left his own permanent mark. 

The first time it happened, he was sixteen. They were at some after party at an East City estate, and Vegeta was so fucked up on champagne and pills that he barely remembered it. Waking up the next morning with foggy memories in some vacant guest room, he convinced himself it didn’t happen at all. Except that the pain of it lingered, and he laid in the bus for days staring at the ceiling of his bunk, trying to discern what the fuck was real because he couldn’t for the life of him accept _that_ was it.

The second time shook him quickly out of any sense of denial he’d been ignorantly harboring. They were halfway across the country in some backwater town at a hotel not unlike the dives where Saiyans were currently residing. They’d been on a tertiary route for weeks, and Frieza seemed annoyed and restless. Vegeta sensed it coming. He was awake, more or less, and he fought back, hard. He remembered that much, flailing like a fish out of water, but at half strength thanks to whatever Frieza slipped him. The monster clocked him in the face, and everything slipped away.

The third time, at the Cold’s Uptown high rise was much like the second. He didn’t bother giving him enough drugs to knock him out. It was for his own twisted amusement, leaving him halfway conscious but fucked up enough that he couldn’t defend himself. That quickly became Frieza’s preferred method, to leave him in limbo, just conscious enough that he’d remember, but not so conscious that he’d be able to do anything about it. 

He felt stupid for staying, and he hated himself for it, but at the same time he was afraid to come forward. Besides the utter horror of admitting his shame to the public, the Colds owned half the city, and he was nothing but a street kid they ‘saved’ from the gutter. That was one reason he didn’t act, because of who the Colds were. And on top of their status, he’d been an avid fan of the band himself when he was a kid and they took him in. They made him famous, and not just in that city, but the whole country. 

He knew he wouldn’t be believed even if he’d had the balls to speak up. And after a while, the idea of speaking out against them seemed more humiliating than the acts themselves. So he stayed—or at least convinced himself it was a valid reason _to_ stay. He still fought back in the moments he was conscious enough to try. But more often than not, he was so medicated, by himself or them or both, that he just succumbed to it all and closed his eyes and pretended he didn’t exist. 

Vados was calling him again, and Vegeta slipped away from the bar to answer her, retreating to the furthest booth from the men in the room to flip open his phone.

“What?”

“Hello to you too,” she said. “Can’t manage to answer your phone?”

“I already know what you’re gonna say.”

“Good. That saves me the breath. Look, kid.. You have two options. Either you press charges or you don’t. Obviously, I’d advise you to do the former. I’ll represent you pro bono. You won’t owe me a dime. That, however, will require you to speak on the record. Can you do that?”

Vegeta didn’t have to think to spit the negative. “Fuck no. I’d rather die.”

“Well… I hate to state the obvious, but you’re going to have to talk either way. The press aren’t going to let this go without hearing from you. Vegeta, they’re never going to stop. If you care for my advice, I’d say face the facts. Press charges, because either way, you’re going to be forced to speak. You might as well knock them dead while you’re at it, right?”

He took her words in, trying his damndest to process them rationally without throwing up. Vados was right. His options were the same no matter which route he took, except one. There was one path left open that avoided it all. Though the more he thought about going through with it, the tighter his throat felt. His hands began to shake, and he could barely hold the phone to his ear.

“Vegeta?”

“I… uh… I can’t... breathe.” It didn’t matter that he was drunk and waning from a high, he still couldn’t curb the panic that was quickly sweeping over him. Tremors began to rake through his entire body, and his lungs constricted, squeezed by a vice that left him struggling to stay conscious.

“Is someone with you?”

“No,” he croaked.

“Vegeta, is there someone you can call?”

“No!” he cried, trying to swallow the idea that he had nothing and nobody left to answer him. He’d managed to successfully trash every crumb of care anyone had ever kicked in his direction. 

“Vegeta, where are you? Don’t hang-”

He clapped his phone shut only to reopen it again and text the girl his whereabouts with no shortage of threats should she disclose them to anyone.

In the meantime, while he waited, he stumbled his way to the bathroom on unsteady limbs. He could barely see straight as he tore open the little baggie and dumped its contents on the sill of the sink, plowing his nose against whatever remained of the stash the girl had given him. It was a lot, more than he expected, and as the dope flooded his head, he nearly passed out. He wished he’d had.

He was back at the bar, four more double-shots downed, when the girl stepped inside.

“I take it she’s with you?” the bartender nodded at the blonde dressed in the same black denim, studded belt, and morbidly graphic tee.

“The guys are looking for you,” she said as she sidled up to him.

“N'ssshit.” Vegeta slurred. “We'otta ge' outta 'ere thugh. Hotel 'er somethin’. Heyy!” He turned to the bartender. “How much fer tha res'a’ tha bottle?”

The man tisked as he thought about it. “Fuck it. It’s on the house, kid.” He slid the half-filled bottle of cheap whiskey across the bar, ignoring the fat man’s scoff. 

“Thanks dude,” Vegeta said, wrapping his fist around the neck. He pulled his hood back over his head and stood, stumbling over his first few steps as he knocked over the stool. His exit would always be more dramatic than the way he came in. That too was his style. They’d hear about it. He was high and drunk as fuck, and as he wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulders to steady his feet, he turned back. “See ya’ a’round. Sure y’ll read ‘bout me 'n tha papers ‘er somethin’,’” he said, wagging the bottle at the men as they stumbled out the front door into the dark. 

***

When Raditz left the stage after soundcheck, it didn’t take more than a peripheral glance around the tiny greenroom to realize the girl was gone. Vegeta had gotten to her, he was sure. He tried calling first, but she didn’t answer. It was impossible to be angry with her. It wasn’t Cat’s fault that she was intimidated by Vegeta, and anything he asked of her would be met with meek compliance. Cat was an abused little girl from a broken home. Daddy issues were an understatement. And Vegeta was the last person she’d stand up to. He was her schoolgirl crush, after all, and he was mean and demanding when he wanted to be. The starstruck power he held over her meant that at a drop of a hat, as the rest of the band checked their instruments after Vegeta had wandered off, she’d run away to meet him when he called.

The press out front had them all scrambling to figure out just what the fuck they were supposed to do in the situation. Whis forbid them from speaking to them, but the band’s silence was drawing attention. The press took to interviewing fans out front over the issue, getting their half-baked two cents on Vegeta’s story while the only people that knew anything concrete were forced to cower inside the venue, caged away just like the vermin Kakarot found in the dumpster.

Vegeta royally screwed the entire endeavor, and Raditz was growing antsy as they sat in the greenroom waiting for news. Was he even going to show up? Kakarot didn’t think so. His brother seemed to pride himself on knowing Vegeta’s moods, and Raditz wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the two were fuck buddies when nobody was looking. Until recently, they always shared a hotel room, and Vegeta did let the occasional boy slip it to him from time to time. After all, that’s what the press were here for, weren’t they? And Kakarot, the idiot, seemed to get a hard on for Vegeta’s affection.

From the moment Vegeta entered the picture, Kakarot swooned over him, and with Vegeta already being Nappa’s little pet project, Raditz was hard-pressed to insert his own thoughts on the newcomer who completely took over the band _he_ created and turned it on its head. He hated him, plain and simple. Vegeta was a terrible, self-interested piece of shit who stole his band and turned his own brother against him.

On top of it, he hoodwinked Bulma into caring for him, and if Raditz was being honest, that fact hit harder than the man stealing his band and his brother combined. Raditz knew that Bulma would never go for a guy like himself. She was leagues above a dirtbag like him, and it was his own fault. He was a shithead as a kid, vicious to her and Kakarot both. That left an impression. He was never going to be the caliber of person that a girl like Bulma deserved, and despite chasing her through his entire adolescence, he was always second best to his own his little brother, who Raditz knew had already won her heart.

Kakarot and Bulma had been inseparable for years. Despite him being two years younger, they were kismet, and everyone expected they’d end up together eventually. That Yamcha douchebag was a flash in the pan. All along, Raditz was certain that Kakarot was her destiny. He’d almost become content with the fact. If he couldn’t win Bulma’s affection, at least he’d lost to his own flesh and blood. Yet somehow, Vegeta managed throw the Kakarot theory into the fire, reduce it to ash like an old love note. It was fucking mind blowing. Bulma sidestepped the pretty jock, sidestepped Kakarot, and sidestepped himself for _Vegeta_? That psychopath? That’s what she wanted, not even subtly, but wholly and unendingly. Vegeta could do no wrong in her eyes. He could fuck twenty strangers up and down the coast, and she’d still stand by him.

Raditz glared around the greenroom, stewing in a pool of absolute hatred for the fucker, glancing at his phone every three seconds as he waited for Cat to ping him back. Vegeta was probably fucking her too.

When his phone finally buzzed with the name and address of a hotel, Raditz eagerly made to slip from the greenroom, but of course, his dumbass brother was paying close attention.

“Where you going?”

“I found your cock-sucking boyfriend, and I’m going to retrieve the fucker. You’re welcome, Kakarot!”

“Where is he? I’m coming with you.” Kakarot made to stand.

“Sit the fuck down. Bulma’s almost here. I’ll get Vegeta. You wait for her. Cool?”

Kakarot’s eyes narrowed, untrusting of Raditz’s game. Not unwarranted considering he only wanted to go alone to shoot up at the same time, and he couldn’t do that in front of his goody-two-shoed sibling.

Thankfully, Kakarot didn’t make too much of a fuss and reluctantly agreed to wait for Bulma at the venue.

Raditz slipped past the press through the backdoor, and traversed his way through the throng of fans that lined the blocks to the hotel address that Cat had sent him. It was only a few blocks away, but it seemed much further the way his blood itched and pulsed beneath his skin in anticipation. After taking the stairs practically two at a time, he knocked at the door with a heavy hand, and it felt like far too long before the girl answered it to let him inside.

Vegeta was sitting on the edge of the bed with a belt wrapped around his arm. He looked miserable, with red-rimmed, sunken eyes glaring up at him suspiciously. An empty bottle of whiskey hit Ratitz’s foot as he crossed the room.

“Damn dude. Did you cache a whole bottle?” he joked.

“Foun’t tha’ way,” Vegeta mumbled.

His eyelids barely hung open, and he was struggling to inject a dose of dope into his own arm, cursing loudly when he missed the vein.

“Fuuuuck!” The misplaced prick suddenly reanimated him with a start. “Bishh, y'fuckin’ do this?”

Cat spun from Raditz instantly to help him. She took the syringe from Vegeta’s fingers and pulled his arm, tightening the belt around it before she asked him to pump his fist. Vegeta was already so faded that he could barely keep his head upright much less close his fingers around his palm. Cat still managed to sink the needle into the crook of his elbow, and at the press of her finger, Vegeta’s eyes floated to the back of his head as he laid back against the mattress.

“You wanna cook one up for me?” Raditz asked as he sat down alongside him.

Cat nodded. She dabbed a bit of dope into a spoon and began to cook up a dose. “That was the last needle,” she admitted as the substance began to bubble.

“Fuck, really?” Raditz looked back down at Vegeta. “You don’t got the HIV or anything do ya?”

It sprung from his lips as a joke, but Vegeta was out cold, and the more Raditz pondered it, he realized the question wasn’t quite so funny. Vegeta had been a hoe the past few weeks. Sharing a needle with him wasn’t smart.

“Dammit… Just gimme a line I guess.”

They had to play soon anyway, and it was probably for the best that he didn’t fade his dome too much before he got onstage. They didn’t have any blow to counteract the drug. How the hell he was going to drag Vegeta’s sorry ass back to the venue was another thought he pondered as he watched Cat pour a little pile of dope onto the nightstand. They’d probably have to buy a cab to move him three fucking blocks, if cabs existed in this shithole.

Raditz bent to snort the line. Fuck him. If heroin wasn’t the most satisfying creation known to man. It felt like bliss incarnate. If Raditz believed in God, heroin was Her. Everything, good or bad, was smoothed away in an instant. He no longer felt anger toward anyone or anything around him. Not in the way he was accustomed. When he was this up, all their claims were nullified, deflected from his body like it was magnetic in the opposing sense. None of their chastising stuck. The routine mockery of his existence didn’t reach him. Under sober circumstances, he had thick skin, more so than most people. He tried to bat the jokes away with a wave of his palm, despite that everyone’s claims always settled in his bones like frosty air, and he was left to lie awake at night to mull over their disappointment. He was a fuck-up, plain and simple. He’d never be Kakarot. Gohan made that clear, as did Bulma and Kakarot himself.

Yet on heroin, in one, fresh moment, all his hard-hitting failures, his inability to take life by the balls and meet their expectations were smoothed away like hot butter. He wasn’t mad anymore about his parents’ deaths, or about his inability to adapt the same way his brother did to the West. Learning English wasn’t exactly easy, and while Kakarot complained that he didn’t know their native tongue, Raditz laughed knowing his brother didn’t have to go through the same assimilation he was forced to as a child.

Kakarot should have been grateful he didn’t have to experience the torment of not knowing the language of the place he lived, getting made fun of in school, “stupid” being the first word Raditz committed to his vocabulary. In that way, Raditz could identify with Vegeta who went through the same process. Nappa and Kakarot both were lucky. Nappa was born in the West, a second-generation immigrant whose family left before the war, completely intact, and Kakarot came here as a baby. Neither of them knew their homeland. Only Vegeta did. If Raditz didn’t butt heads with the fucker every goddamned minute, maybe they could learn from each other.

“We gotta go, dude.” Raditz looked down at his sluggish form and shook Vegeta by the shoulder. “We play in thirty.” The arm he shook was dead weight. “Come on man. Rise and shine.” Raditz said, shaking him harder, but as Vegeta’s limbs moved like rubber, lithe beneath his fingers, an unsettling realization sunk his gut, and he bent his head to his lips... There was nothing there. His chest was still, unmoving.

“Are you okay?” No sooner did he ask the question when reality dawned on him. Vegeta wasn’t okay. He wasn’t even breathing.

“What the fuck did you do?!” Raditz shouted at the girl who dropped the dose she was procuring for herself to let it spill over the nightstand.

“I didn’t do anything!” Cat cried. She stumbled backward, bug-eyed, crawling her way back to her feet. “He’s fine, isn’t he?”

Raditz bent his head again to Vegeta’s face, but there was nothing, no breath. He was comatose. His chest laid still as a cadaver, and not a whiff of air oozed between his lips.

“Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!” Raditz jumped from the bed and pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

“Who are you calling?” Cat’s voice pitched in fear. “You can’t call the cops! Raditz, we’ll get in trouble!’

“Fuck you! I don’t care! Get rid of that shit!” he screamed as he pulled his cell phone to call 911. His mind moved at a pace that felt supernatural as the phone rang against his ear and he shouted at the girl to dispose of any remnants of drugs. The authorities sounded over the line.

“I… uh.. My friend isn’t breathing…” 

“What’s your location?” the woman on the other end asked. 

For a moment, Raditz couldn’t get his mouth to move. Despite that Vegeta’s life hung on the line, Cat had gotten to his head, or maybe it was the dose he’d just ingested. He hesitated, not knowing if he could tell the truth without getting in trouble himself. Raditz was left frozen, watching the girl frantically stuff her contraband into her handbag.

“Sir?... Hello?” 

The voice on the line sounded far away, like they were speaking through tin cans. _Move!_ his instinct begged, but it was dulled to a low hum as the drug settled in his skull and stole his function. 

“Are you still there? Where are you?”

The loud snap of the front door shook him back into his head as he realized Cat had just left. She left! The fog cleared from his mind enough to feel some vague sense of shock. She was gone, and Vegeta was… Raditz managed to drag his focus down to Vegeta’s prone from where a blue hue had begun to seep into his lips. Oh fuck… That woke him. 

“He uh… he O.D.’d! Please help. I don’t know what the fuck to do!”

“Where _are_ you?” she asked again, and Raditz blinked around the room before he picked up a pad of paper on the nightstand that read ‘Centennial Hotel’ across the letterhead.

“What’s your room number?”

“Fuck, I don’t know!” he shouted.

“That’s okay. Go check. Dispatch is on its way already. What’s your name?” The woman asked.

“Raditz, my my name is Raditz,” he said as he ran to the front door and pulled it open to read the numbers. “It’s room 237.”

“Okay, Raditz. Do you know CPR?”

“No!” He didn’t fucking know anything! How did this woman sound so calm? If it was meant to be reassuring, it wasn’t working. Raditz was smart enough to know that she was trained to maintain a false sense of security until the EMTs arrived. In real life, people died. They always died, and he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t save Vegeta anymore than he could his own parents.

“Don’t worry. I’ll teach you.”

Teach him? Like they had time for a fucking phone lesson on CPR? He was a fucking ameatur, and Vegeta was dying, if he wasn’t dead already.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing!” he admitted. The break in his voice was unexpected, and the moment it slipped between his lips, he couldn’t stop the panicked sobs that continued to spill from his throat. He sounded like an overgrown baby. He hardly recognized his own wails.

“Raditz, I need you to keep calm and focus if you’re gonna help your friend. Doing something is better than nothing, right? Take a deep breath. You can do that, can’t you?”

Raditz nodded to himself, wiping at his eyes that refused to stop leaking. She was right. Doing nothing wasn’t an option. Vegeta’s life depended on him. “Yes!”

The woman on the phone directed him to pull Vegeta’s pliant form from the bed to the hard floor and press his palms against his chest at a steady pace. Thank god he was a musician, and he pumped against him like a metronome. The heels of his palms beat mindlessly against Vegeta’s sternum at the tempo she prescribed, and he tipped his head back and pinched his nose to blow air between his lips at regular intervals. The process was as easy and as teachable as she promised. And for the first few breaths he was hopeful, but after the minutes dragged on, as he continued to move through the motions without any reaction, his mind began to drown under the effort, slipped into limbo, as if his own soul hung between the planes of existence, between life and the sick, black nothing of death. He couldn’t die. The idea of Vegeta dying here and now beneath his own two hands was too twisted. Everytime his mind viciously crept into that dark space, he’d force himself to breathe, as if his own inhales and exhales could somehow circumvent the sinkhole where Vegeta was headed, if he wasn’t already there. If he was dying or dead, there wasn’t any way Raditz could come back from this intact. Kakarot and Bulma would never forgive him.

His palms continued to pump with dauntless effort against Vegeta’s chest as he maintained a steady stream of air at the intervals the woman directed, breathing desperately between his colorless lips.

Time felt at a standstill, yet at the same time it moved too fast, and all his efforts seemed in vain like he was kissing a fucking corpse. Panic began to settle in his limbs, threatened to overwhelm him as he pressed on. Odd thoughts began to spill between his breaths. Like how he’d explain what happened to his brother… or to Bulma. He could picture their faces. They’d never get over it, and they’d blame him. He did this. Raditz’s own breath threatened to leave his body permanently picturing what Kakarot would look like when he told him that Vegeta was dead.

“Wake the fuck up!” he screamed with his face pressed so close, he could feel the chill that was settling in the tip of Vegeta’s nose... But his cheeks were still warm, and Raditz screamed again, imagining the fucker was still there somewhere in that head, and he could hear him.

“Raditz, I need you to stay calm,” the woman on the other end demanded. It was fruitless, she could tell him fuck all. The color of Vegeta’s face continued to drain to a frosty white.

“He’s gonna die.” Raditz cried. He could hear the sirens from the window. But even so, Vegeta had been out for so long. He’d stopped breathing without Raditz noticing for the first few minutes. That was perhaps the most haunting part of it all. He was too preoccupied, too focused on getting a hit to notice that Vegeta was dying right next to him. Desperate, he couldn’t stop from pummeling his fists against his chest. “Wake up! Please! I don’t fucking hate you! Please Vegeta, just wake up.”

He struggled to tear himself away from him as the heavy knock of the paramedics beat against the door, worried that if he left him for a second, Vegeta would slip away permanently, and it took too long for Raditz to tear his palms from his chest and force his own body from the floor to let them in. Two medics burst into the room and pushed him aside, while two others held the door.

“What did he take?” asked the girl.

“Heroin.” Raditz mumbled.

Medical jargon he didn’t understand was exchanged between the medics, and the male quickly readied a shot of something and stuck it in Vegeta’s shoulder. They both crowded above his prone form, and Raditz couldn’t see anything besides his legs. One of the limbs moved… or he thought it did, barely a kick. If it was real, then it was something, but Raditz wasn’t so sure if it was his imagination. Desperately, he wanted that small kick to be real, and Raditz expelled a long held breath to ask, “He’s alive?”

“I’ve got a pulse,” the female paramedic said.

The male doc, who was bent over Vegeta’s face, must have recognized him. “Party like a rockstar, huh?” he said with a dark smile.

“Hey! Fuck you man!” Raditz shouted. He was the king of tasteless dark jokes, but he couldn’t take one in the moment. “You’re sure he’s okay?”

The girl looked up at him. “Well, normally a dose of narcan will snap a person out of it. But he’s still pretty high if you ask me. I think we should take him in.”

Her partner nodded at the medics that held the door, and before Raditz could process a thought, they were carting him away.

“Do you want to ride with?” The girl asked.

He didn’t, but he knew he should.

“Yeah, I’m right behind you.” he said. His phone was buzzing his brother’s name across the display, and he drew the device to his ear, heavy as an anvil. “Kakarot,” he sighed, “I need you to meet me at the hospital.”

He clapped his phone shut before he had to hear his response.


	31. Pictures of You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry for the delay! I was working on my Mini Bang one-shot for Vegebulocracy and getting buried in my new day job. But I'm reaaaady now to keep this baby rolling, cause we're not that far (but yet still so far) from the end. 
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with it! :)
> 
> Biggest thanks to [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) for beta reading, again.
> 
> And to [Starrcrossrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrcrossrose/) for drawing MOAR art, including a Browbeater Magazine cover with B/V.
> 
>  
> 
> [Share the Arts!](https://twitter.com/Starrcrossrose/status/1123619233777180673)
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

_It’s one of those moonless nights where it’s hard to tell whether or not his eyes are open, and Vegeta blinks to be sure. The blanket that should cover him has been kicked off and twisted into knots, leaving him open to the cold. Most nights it’s the desert’s sharp plunge in temperature that wakes him. He tucks his limbs closer to his body, curling into a tight ball to keep some heat. But after a while—as sleep continues to evade him, and he’s sure if there were moonlight, his breath would be visible—he unfurls himself from the bed and darts across the room with his shoulders hunched up his neck and his arms hugged around him._

_He tiptoes down the dark hall, a path he’s traversed so many times, he doesn’t need the light to find his footing. Her lamp is on. He can see it seeping through the crack in her door. Why she’s still awake sparks his curiosity because she’s never awake at this hour, and usually, he can slip into her bed unnoticed. But as he draws closer, he can hear her voice speaking lowly, almost at a whisper. She’s not alone. Another voice responds, gruff and deep. For a moment he forgets the reason he’s come as he peeps through the crack._

_A large hand is rubbing her bare shoulder, slow and gentle. The voice it’s attached to is a low rumble, so rich that Vegeta can practically feel its vibration stretch across the floorboards to hum beneath his bare feet. As he glances down at his toes, wiggling them, he remembers why he’s there. The chill is still nipping at his back like a ghost in the dark, and he’ll do anything to escape it._

_“What is it boy?” The deep voice booms across the room, loud like thunder._

_He jerks his head up from his feet to meet eyes with the strange man that’s scowling over his mother’s shoulder. His dark, dangerous glare speaks to him wordlessly, demanding him to run along, and as much as Vegeta knows he should obey the imposing presence—retreat back down the hall to his bedroom, untwine the blanket and make it his cocoon—he doesn’t move. Instead he pushes the door to let it creak open, let the lamplight spill over his cold limbs as if the bulb can warm him._

_“What is it? Did you have a nightmare?” She’s pulling a garment over her body that’s not hers and slips out of bed, crossing the room with light steps, ignoring the man’s protests, to kneel before him. “Come here.”_

_Vegeta shakes his head. He doesn’t dare move past the threshold. As much as he wants to escape the dark and lonely space behind him, the looming figure in her room is perhaps worse. He can’t pull his eyes from the man’s stiff glare to look at her. She reaches for him, and her hand lightly strokes his cheek and wraps around the back of his head to regain his attention, softly fingering the short hair at the nape of his neck._

_“Tell me, my cubby, what is it?”_

_“It’s cold,” he says under his breath, only to her._

_That’s all. It wasn’t a nightmare, it was worse than one—hollow and bleak, a loneliness that sent him to panic and chase the light, to seek out the only person that can ever shut the feelings down with soft, lulling words and the warm brush of her hands over his shoulders as she pulls him into her chest._

_“Cold? Oh no, no, no. Let’s fix that,” she chuckles, her voice falling over him in soothing, warm waves as she hugs him close. His nose dips into the collar of her shirt, but it doesn’t smell like her at all._

_“Put the boy back to bed, Ana. He’s four years old. Do not continue to baby him.”_

_His mother turns to glare at the man over her shoulder. “Do not presume to tell me how to raise my son.”_

_“Our son.”_

_“Tch, since when?” she scoffs. “Oh, come.” She picks Vegeta up on her hip holding his head in the crook of her neck._

_But before he can wrap his limbs around her, the man leaps from the bed and snatches him from her arms. Vegeta bites back the urge to yelp feeling himself be torn from her comforting frame by the hands of a stranger. He fears the man will bring him back, deposit him in bed alone in that dark, chilly space. But he doesn’t. Instead he drops him in the middle of her bed._

_“Lay down, boy,” he commands. “No more of this after tonight, running to your mother every time you’re scared. Do you hear me?”_

_Vegeta doesn’t respond. It’s not fear that draws him to her bedroom; it’s something else that he can’t explain. Cold, that’s part of it, but it’s not just the temperature. It’s a feeling, like his stomach is missing, like it’s been carved out with an ice cream scoop, and there’s just a hole there where it used to be. And the empty crater leaves him anxious, desperate to patch up, to fill it with something substantial, but he can’t find anything to satiate him besides her. When he’s with her, the feeling isn’t there, but when he’s alone, it threatens to eat him alive._

_“Doesn’t he speak?”_

_“Only when he has to,” she answers._

_“What? Is he dumb?”_

_A laugh spills from his mother’s lips, loud and wicked, and Vegeta cocks his head and narrows his eyes at the man with the corner of his mouth pulled into a smirk hearing her boast._

_“Oh no, quite the opposite. He’s calculating a way to get you back for suggesting such a silly thing!”_

_As the man meets his gaze with his eyes pinned half shut, he suddenly darts his face in close within an inch of Vegeta’s nose. A barely visible flinch crosses Vegeta’s face, but he doesn’t back away. The man’s lip curls over his teeth, and a growl rumbles from his throat. But when Vegeta scrunches his nose and growls right back, the man breaks a smile._

_“You’re mean little brat aren’t you?” he says, ruffing up his hair. “Now, lay your smartass down and go to sleep.”_

_His mother climbs into bed on his other side. She begins to hum a lullaby, one Vegeta knows like the back of his hand, and he turns his head to face the man as he settles down against the mattress, as if daring him to tell her to stop. But the man’s expression is soft and unperturbed, almost pensive. His eyelids hang half closed as he listens._

_The man stretches his arm across him to rest his palm on his mother’s shoulder, brushing her skin with his thumb. Enveloped between them, Vegeta feels himself grow warm and heavy with sleep._

_Just as he drifts off, her tone shifts, and her song screeches off into a piercing ring that burns against his eardrums, its pitch leaping octaves and cranking in volume. Not just one voice, but many, like a chorus of banshees twisting their song in eerie harmony. Shrieks so ungodly loud, they pin him where he lies, paralyze him against the dirt. He can only open his eyes to stare beyond the lattices of magenta flowers that displace the air above his head—their petals pulled from the vines as if captured by the white, shoestring clouds that are threading across the sky._

_Suddenly the voices drop pitch, descending with the same speed and force as their crescendo—booms that crack the earth, so deep and so loud that he can’t actually hear them. Just the echo of their eerie tones ring inside his head, and their vibrations begin to break the ground beneath his limbs. A dark cloud of earth kicks up around him and blots the sky._

_It’s as if their song is a passcode that ripped the gates of Hell wide open to let the darkness free. Cold teeth sink into his arm and gnash against his torso, trying to swallow him in pieces, trying to drag him beneath the rumbling earth limb by limb to eternally trap him with that hopeless, empty feeling._

_“Cubby?”_

_She’s calling for him, but her voice weak and distant. “Are you cold? Come here.”_

_Vegeta blinks in the blackness, trying to latch onto the sound of her voice and follow it, but there’s nothing to grab hold to. Her voice seems to spin around him in a vortex, ebbing in and out of his ears, sometimes calling his name from every corner of the deep, dark space at once._

_He can’t feel the sting of teeth anymore. He can’t feel anything besides an icy chill that fills his core and freezes it like stone to sink him further. The whirling storm around him subsides the further he drops._

_“Vegeta!” she calls again, her voice stretched and desperate, but faint and far above him._

_He wants to call to her and explain why he’s sinking, why he couldn’t do what she asked, but every breath is painfully fractured by frosty, little shards that cut through his lungs and damn against his throat to choke him. She can’t hear him this far down._

_As the storm around him calms into a slow current, he begins to understand. He’s been fated to this space all along. His destiny was always pointed here. The cold, lonely chills that haunted him as a child were nothing more than beacons pinging him to meet it, the anxiety that he’d been covering with substances nothing more than his own resistance, fighting against what was always meant to be._

_“What’s the matter, little pet?” The words spill over him in icy torrents, a familiar voice that should incense him to rage, but it doesn’t. It can’t touch him any worse than the place he’s headed, but Frieza won’t let him go. It’s like he’s grabbing him by the throat, some spiteful lifeboat keeping him afloat. “Are you still lonely?”_

_If he could answer him, he’d tell him the truth, that hard as he tried to break him, he was just kicking a dead horse. He’d never won, not once. If they’d never met, Vegeta would have been here sooner, a nameless nobody that never accomplished anything besides jacking a few luxury cars and probably would have died homeless on the floor of some fluorescent-lit subway in the same manner. Frieza unwittingly made him into something, offered him forty minutes of life nearly three hundred nights a year for seven years. Those minutes were everything. They were the only thing. He can almost hear the audience’s cries chanting his name over the sound emanating from his amp. He can feel the strings denting the calluses of his fingertips as he holds them against the frets and lets his last chord fade to its inevitable end._

_But then, the lights flick on, and the house music starts up with the pretty chimes of The Cure’s “Pictures of You” fading in over the speakers, a song he’s heard thousands of times played over and over through his headphones as he time-traveled between venues with the dull same old landscapes blurring past the window._

_“Wake the fuck up!” Raditz shouts in his face as he crosses the stage._

_Vegeta didn’t realize he’s been standing in a daze with his guitar still strapped to his body, one hand wrapped around its neck. He yanks the cord and unthreads the instrument from his head to hook over his shoulder. Adrenaline still pumps through his veins, and he can barely control his own limbs as he flicks off the pedals and kneels to snap the case shut. But it’s not real. It’s a dream; he’s sure of it. Even the air feels out of place here, thinner, almost absent. As hard as he tries, he can’t get enough to properly fill his lungs, yet the suffocation of this space is the least of his problems. As he closes up his gear, he’s distracted by some force that begins to pull at the back of his head—a warm, needy presence taunting him the same as a line of oxy or a bump of coke, except this one is different. It feels like something as lost and desperate as the summer sun in North, almost like home, like the burn of the desert’s afternoon rays seeping into his skin as he lays in the garden, filling him with warm light. As much as he wants to turn around, as familiar as the aura is, he knows it’s a figment of his sick head, just a ghost that feels like her but isn’t really there. He’s known that for more than a decade, almost two. But still the sensation is unrelenting, begging him to turn around._

_“Hey, Vegeta! Come’re!” Kakarot’s voice beckons over his shoulder._

_“What?” he snaps without moving a damn nerve, freezing himself to the floor like some statue gargoyle. He refuses to flinch. One twitch of his fragile nerves will tip a domino and crack him. He’ll crumble and burst apart into tiny bits of dust, and as much as that’s his destiny, is everyone’s eventually, he isn’t fucking ready, and he doesn’t know why, exactly. He thought he was. He was fucking sure of it before._

_“I want you to meet my friend.”_

_Vegeta imperceptibly shakes his head, staring straight ahead at the empty, black pit. Everyone is gone now but them. If he turns around, if he sees her, he knows he’s really dead. He tries to focus on the song booming overhead. Besides Kakarot’s voice, it’s the most tangible thing in the room to tether him to the living world._

_“Vegeta!” He’s still begging him to come, but why? Kakarot’s not dead. So why the fuck is he here? His voice is more than a comfort. It warms his frosty veins to keep his blood moving and pulsing beneath his skin. Vegeta’s nerves itch as he takes the sound in, fighting the urge to turn and run to him. But maybe that’s what Kakarot is trying to tell him, that he’s not dead, and that’s the point. But why does it feel like she’s there with him? He has to know. The idiot won’t stop calling his name._

_A head rush forces him to clutch his skull and refocus his vision to where Kakarot is standing, smiling like an idiot at the side of the stage. But the moment Vegeta gives him his attention his vision vignettes around the girl at Kakarot’s side. It’s_ her _that’s pulling him, not his mother. It feels like this girl exists somewhere in the pit of him, a dormant seed that decided to bloom this very moment._

 _Kakarot’s hand is needlessly flapping at the air to beg him over. But he’s already there. He’s standing in front of the girl with his guitar hooked over his shoulder, half listening to the moron run his mouth as he introduces her as his longtime best friend…_ Bulma _. The name strikes a familiar chord, like it’s always been there rooted somewhere in the recesses of his mind as an age-old song, but he can’t pinpoint why or how. Her smile too, he feels as if he’s looked upon it as many times as he’s heard_ this _stupid song that’s playing over the speakers._

_“Why do I feel like I already know you?”_

_“Perhaps we’re soul mates,” she says with a flick of her eyebrows. Her hand juts out to cup his cheek, which heats beneath her palm like it’s sun kissed. The smile that draws across her cherry red lips glows just as bright. Her touch feels so familiar, like whatever she said is true and absolute, and he’s known her for a lifetime._

_“You believe in that bullshit?”_

_“Maybe,” she shrugs. Her fingers are brushing the line of his jaw, transferring warmth from her palm to spiderweb through his veins and unthaw every dead corner. “Parallel universes… Who’s to say? What if one exists where I love you this very second, and regardless of time and space, it’s still true across them all?”_

_“Do you?”_

_“Do I what?”_

_“Really love me… in_ this _one?” he asks it quietly, nearly under his breath, the low whisper of his voice contradicting his desperate need for an answer. Every cell in his body is dancing beneath her touch, colorful and bright as pieces of a dead star fighting to be reborn._

_“Vegeta, I love you in all of them,” she says. Her words are so fast they almost smear together, like she’s said them far more times than he’s asked to hear them, and they’re just second nature. But her brows are pinned in a hard line like she’s in pain._

_He can’t tear his eyes from hers even if he wants to. They’re stuck in a thoughtful daze, searching behind them for the truth. As much as he wants to believe her, he doesn’t. Why would he? What’s the reason; he wants to know that more than anything. Why him?_

_Despite knowing her answer before she said it, he can’t bring himself to accept her declaration without it being told to him a hundred times until it sticks. Even then, love is math, a simple equation, one plus one. He’s always been the missing integer, always, and he never knew why. How was she any different?_

_“Don’t think about it,” she answers, like she can hear his thoughts. “It won’t change anything. Only you can.”_

_“But how?”_

_“By trusting me.”_

_“I don’t trust anybody.”_

_“I know,” she mumbles, dropping her hypnotizing gaze for a second that’s just long enough to let the warm comfort of her presence vacate his body and leave him cold and empty all over again._

_As much as he deserves to rot, he can’t stand it. The absence of the girl’s touch feels like the cold, clammy hands of death taking him by the cheeks. It’s a limbo where he’s hanging with his soul suspended between two planes of existence, and he can’t decide for himself what’s worse. Even if she loves him as she says, he wonders if it’s enough. Is it ever?_

_He can’t commit and return the feeling because he doesn’t deserve it from her in the first place, not in any universe. But the alternative is to sink and snuff himself out, permanently switch off the song and let the lights in the room fade to eternal blackness. Maybe, deep down, that’s not what he wants anymore. But he can’t puzzle together the pieces why. Why now? What’s the fucking point?_

_“Bulma…” her name cracks his vocal cords, pitched in a pathetic whimper with the words that follow falling from his mouth without his consent. “Please… I don’t know where I’m supposed to be.”_

_“Open your eyes, Vegeta,” she says, but she’s stepping away, one then two small steps backward from his frame. She’s moving away, but somehow it feels less like she’s leaving him than coaxing him to follow._

_Even knowing the direction he should go, he’s reluctant. Even if he follows, he might never find the strength of mind to see it through. And even if he manages that one pathetic step forward, it’s only a matter of time until he’s back here. There’s no light besides this one gliding away, a pinpoint of a distant star in a universe that’s growing apart._

_“Open your eyes,” she says again, only this time in his head, like an echo. She’s still backing further down the darkened hall before she turns away, and her porcelain face becomes a swirl of distant blue hues._

_“But I never see anything!” he calls as she disappears, and he’s alone._

***

Vegeta’s eyes opened and took in the blurry space around him, tracing up the cords that extended from the top of his hand to the bags of fluids that were attached to a chrome pole at his bedside.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” said a man that hovered over his frame. His lab coat gave him away, and the night quickly came back to Vegeta’s head, realizing that he was in the hospital, again. He failed. “Can you tell me your name?”

“You know my name.” His voice came out stiff, weak and scratchy.

“Right, just making sure _you_ know it. You were out for a long time. Lucky you’re not a vegetable. Hell, you’re lucky to be alive at all.”

Was he? Vegeta tore his eyes from the doctor’s to stare across the room at the bare, white wall and collect his muddied thoughts. He didn’t plan on waking up, and now that he was awake and alive, he was forced to discern if he was happy about the fact. Though, it didn’t take more than a few tight breaths to know he wasn’t. He’d been in this position before, and he wasn’t about to endure it again, to suffer horribly for days on end only to wind up back in the same old cycle. Why didn’t it work? 

“Well, I’m fucking fine. See? Can I go now?” he spit out, the words directed at his toes that were tucked in beneath the thin, woven blanket.

“Kid, if I discharge you now, you’re coming right back through those doors in a body bag,” the doctor stated, matter of fact. 

Vegeta only bit his lip. He couldn’t drag his gaze from the gap between his feet where his vision settled against the white, sterile walls. The tiny space felt like a leaky airlock with all oxygen snuffed out as he heard the doctor’s words, knowing they were true. If he was released now, he’d dart right out those doors and find something that could put him down for good. Control was no longer in his toolbelt, if it ever had been in the first place. 

But there was something else, too. Some thimble of relief butted against a tidal wave of his own neediness. Insignificant as it seemed, it was a thought… just enough to be recognized. He was, for the briefest moment, relieved to know that he wasn’t about to be discharged and tossed back to the curb like every other junkie brought back from the dead and left to self-implode, because he would do exactly that if left to his own devices. 

Since the moment he opened his eyes, a small, yet no less nagging force had settled in his soul, some cognizant chunk that sat in his gut and begged for him to breathe. It was a parasite that wasn’t there before, and it was attempting to worm a dichotomous split into his head and set his feelings to war. He was stuck here on watch, probably for days. As much as his knee-jerk, habitual lean toward self-destruction urged him to run, this odd sensation was just enough to keep him from acting on it. 

“Vegeta!” The doctor shouted his name as if he’d been forced to repeat it, urging him to pay attention. “Psych consult won’t be here ‘til tomorrow. In the meantime, it’s up to you whether I put one of my own staff on guard duty or one of your friends in the lobby.”

“I don’t want to see anybody,” he mumbled. On a normal day, he couldn’t take their pity, their disappointment, their anger. He knew himself well enough by now to know he’d balk their feelings on instinct, and if faced with them, he’d only grind his heels in the dirt to piss them off further.

“Fair enough,” the man said before departing his useless wisdom. “You’re in for a rough night.” 

“I know.” 

“Not your first rodeo I take it?”

Vegeta shook his head. He’d done it once before. Detox when he was this far gone was nothing less than a living death. There wasn’t any other way to put it. He knew exactly what was waiting for him in the coming days, maybe in the coming hours thanks to whatever they shot into his arm and were now feeding him through a tube that was mainlined directly into his veins. He glared up at the bag, the sick side of his mind left to wonder just how closely they’d watch him, hoping that he could rip the thing out without them noticing.

***

Goku’s legs wouldn’t stop moving. They bounced beneath his elbows like they belonged to another body, and each rhythmic kick against his chin that was braced atop his hands felt like a punishing blow. He ripped his head up and scanned the waiting room—cold and colorless with panels of fluorescent lights, half of them switched off, and the others buzzing and flickering in different stages of expiration, as if to remind the occupants here of their mortality. 

Raditz was tearing his hair out in a corner as he paced in combat with his come down. And Nappa, who was the only one among them capable of answering their endless phone calls, never left the window where he shifted his weight against the frame talking in low tones to whomever came on the line. Besides them were only two other people: a mother and her child. The kid had wounded her eye somehow and sat in her mother’s lap wailing in bloodcurdling tones with her tiny fist pushed against her socket. The pitch of her cries were piercing as hot pokers inside his eardrums. This was an insane asylum, a place that tested the sanity of even the most secure person and set their blood to boil. If he could scream, he would just to get it off his chest, but he wasn’t the type to make a scene. And the worst part of his bubbling angst was the fact that it was his fault to begin with. He let Vegeta go.

“Are you the band?” intoned a nurse, in a voice dull with irreverence. She stood just outside the ER doors, her greying hair falling from her clip to hang limply against her shoulders. Her weary eyes scanned him before they nudged his brother from his anxious pacing and Nappa from his phone.

Goku didn’t realize just how fast he’d moved until he was standing in front of the woman without any conscious recollection of standing at all. 

“Can I see him?” came rolling from his lips in a voice that was too soft and desperate to be his.

“Perhaps tomorrow,” the nurse sighed. “He’s declined any visitors for the moment.”

Goku shook his head. That was stupid. Didn’t they listen when he explained at intake that nothing about this was an accident?

“You have to let me back there! You don’t understand!”

“We do. And we can promise he’s being supervised by our staff. I’m truly sorry, Mr. uh–” she glanced to read her clipboard, “Mr. Son, but we can’t permit access without the patient’s consent. Perhaps you should come back tomorrow.”

Goku’s lip bubbled as he took in the words. That he wasn’t allowed back solely because Vegeta didn’t want him just tossed his already guilty feelings into somersaults, let them roll over and over and pick up mass and traction. He was horrible. Despite knowing the precarious state of his friend’s head, he let him go. His inattention to the situation could have been the signature on his death certificate, and he kept reminding himself of the thought, forcibly letting his mind trick him into feeling a dose of what he would have felt had that been the outcome. On top of it, Goku couldn’t settle the riotous lurch of his stomach each time Bulma rang his phone for answers. He stopped answering her two hours ago after his first few cryptic texts.

“They’re here,” Nappa said and made his way over to the security guard that’d been posted at the front doors to to keep an entire venue’s worth of fans and the same swarm of press from breaching the parking lot. Bulma burst through the threshold like a thoroughbred, locking eyes as she raced toward him across the lobby with black makeup smeared down her cheeks. 

What he didn’t expect was the boy that trailed behind her who looked like his older brother on his best day, minus a decade of neglect, hard drugs and a few hundred cartons of cigarettes. He did, however, expect the blow, but not quite to the extent that Bulma delivered. 

Small and fragile as his friend seemed, he forgot the force she was capable of unleashing on an opponent when pushed too far and thrust into a blinding, passionate rage. He’d never been on the receiving end of it, at least not directly. She threw her weight against him half crying, half scolding, pummeling her fists against his chest, and he took it with his head hung between his shoulders knowing that he deserved it all.

“Where the fuck were you?” she screamed, her face twisted in the most beautiful lament as her jabs subsided into weary slaps of her palms against his chest that, though they could never deliver physically, still felt atomic. “I told you to watch out for him!” 

What could he say? He wasn’t there. He wanted to be, but after nearly a month on the road in nearly thirty different cities and consecutive shows while putting up with Vegeta’s condition—not to mention Raditz’s decaying standards, and going back and forth between both girls’ opposing demands—his own conflicting thoughts were almost impossible to separate from emotion by now, he made a mistake. It was a fucking mistake. He didn’t know the article had been published, and he didn’t know that was the press’s intention, to corner Vegeta with their cameras rolling as they shouted questions he could never answer but could only feel like a public gutting. By the time Goku realized the fact, it was too late, and Vegeta was long gone. When he didn’t answer, he should have left to find him despite Whis demanding they stay. He shouldn’t have let Raditz manipulate him either. 

Bulma’s face tipped up, brows bent and lips snarled over the white canines of her teeth. Her face was wrought with such contempt that Goku felt his blood chill to a slow murmur. She was fucking right. He should have done something more, but he couldn’t even find the voice to tell her he was sorry. Instead he kept repeating stupidly over and over that Vegeta was fine. He was fine. That’s what the nurse just said.

Bulma collapsed against his chest leaving Goku to debate whether his arm around her would be of any comfort or just serve to piss her off more than she already was. She didn’t give him a choice and pushed away as fast as she’d settled, her attention now directed toward the nurse who’s eyes widened like a frightened animal, frozen and waiting for the woman’s teeth to gnash.

“I need to see him. Let me through!” 

The nurse regurgitated the same response she’d given Goku with a much thinner, far less confident voice as she came face to face with a raging, desperate Bulma Briefs—barely able to appease the girl with a promise that she’d speak to the doctor directly and be right back. Likely the woman ran straight to the breakroom to bide her time until her shift ended. She wouldn’t be returning anytime soon.

“Hey!” Eighteen shouted from behind them. “Where the hell is Mini Me?”

They had all been too distracted to register the fact that Vegeta’s brother was gone. The twist of Bulma’s brows as she glanced around the room was undercut by the reddened vacance of her eyes. She looked two breaths away from keeling over, leaving Goku to wrap a hesitant arm around her shoulders, hoping she wouldn’t suddenly lash to bite the limb clean off. 

“Did you see which way he went?” Goku asked. His own voice was dull and tired, and inquiring on Tarble’s whereabouts solely out of a sick, overcompensating need to appease everyone in the moment. Quite honestly, the teen was the last worry in a head full of worries. Tarble wasn’t even remotely within his ability to process. The rest of them just shook their heads in various states of frustrated exhaustion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the first time I strayed from stealing my chapter titles from TBS TAYF lyrics. I've been listening to a lot of OG emo lately, and since the story went back in time to the 80s when V was a kiddo, I thought it would be fitting. If you haven’t heard that song, it’s so fucking pretty I want to cry.
> 
> Here's one more cutie.
> 
>  
> 
> [Share the Arts!](https://twitter.com/Starrcrossrose/status/1123618492975013889)
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 


	32. Holding On and On (Part One)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Some notes at the end that I didn't want to put here because I don't want to spoil the chapter. 
> 
> As always, 9001 thanks go to [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) for beta reading and [Starrcrossrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrcrossrose/) for another precious piece of this asshole in his element.
> 
>   
> Share the Arts [on Twitter!](https://twitter.com/Starrcrossrose/status/1130964733618601984)  
> [or Tumblr!](https://starrcrossrose.tumblr.com/post/185073998993/hey-wow-ive-done-a-lot-of-art-for-the-fanfic)
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

The pressure of the room was intense enough to explode a nuclear core, and though Tarble understood he was detached and outside of their drama, he couldn’t help but observe that Vegeta’s friends, Bulma included, were doing nothing beyond pointing fingers at one another over an incident that was _now_ beyond their control. Who’s fault it was didn’t matter anymore. It never mattered in the first place. That they thought it did proved just how far gone they all were—obsessed by the inevitability of the situation like a cult of crazies waiting for the rapture, except Vegeta’s personal armageddon was actually probable, damn near guaranteed. They knew Vegeta’s end was coming, but they didn’t do anything to stop it, and Tarble, for the life of him, couldn’t understand why. Maybe they wanted it to happen like those religious nuts in his school who recited lines from the book of Revelation with sickening glee. Maybe they wanted it the same as those fools just so they could get some kind of sick fix—cry about it, blame each other for it, each of them personally claim they’d been right all along while chastising everyone else for being inconsiderate and out of their heads. They were all out of their fucking heads.

They enabled his brother, let him tour when they knew he was sick. Even if they didn’t mean it to be damaging and were maybe just too pussy to tell him no, it didn’t change the fact that they let him decay for a profit. In a way, it was like they were the producers of a contentiously shitty Blockbuster—one they’d invested their resources into and truly believed in, maybe even loved, but at the same time, knew would immediately flop on release because, despite the talent, the material was too devastating and broken to be salvaged. 

He could only stand to listen to Bulma and Goku’s mutual whining for so long, and on top of it, once Eighteen trapped the rest of the band in a corner seeking gossipy retellings of the incident, Tarble realized that perhaps his outsider status actually played to his favor and lent him some cover. The only thing that actually mattered was that Vegeta wasn’t alone, and while the rest of them bickered between themselves and distracted the nurses, his escape was too easy. He walked unnoticed straight through the emergency room door. 

It wasn’t difficult to locate him. As two paramedics strode down the hall toward the doors he’d just entered, he could tell from the knowing, stolen glances between them that there wasn’t any mystery about who he was there to see. His resemblance to his brother had always been a thing among the alt crowd that never went unnoticed, and now that Vegeta broke mainstream, everyone and their mother was suddenly drawing the comparison. Tarble didn’t hate it. Having a famous doppelganger had its perks. His likeness to Vegeta had gotten him laid a few times, and now it got him steered to the man himself. In the maze of hallways and dozens of doors that lined every corridor, he could have easily spent an hour trying to peep through each and every one of their tiny windows hoping to avoid being caught. But the paramedics gave him the kami-damned room number, and the girl even described the path: right, then another right, and if he met the maternity wing he’d gone too far. 

Tarble stepped up to the door, and without hesitating to look through window and no more than one sharp, steadying breath, he pushed it open.

The scene he expected to see, with tubes and monitors and his brother laid out, practically comatose wasn’t quite that at all. Vegeta snapped his head up, alive and certainly well from where his fingers were wrapped around the thin tubes of intravenous fluids that were taped to the top of his hand. The energy that leapt across the room to meet Tarble between the eyes felt almost murderous; though he recognized himself in that black contemptuous look, at least the anger, the loneliness, the displacement as if he was never quite where he was supposed to be—like his whole life was mistaken, and he’d been dropped onto the wrong fucking planet where he didn’t belong. With those feelings, Tarble was intimately familiar. 

What he couldn’t place, at least not personally, was the oddly conflicting desperation in his brother’s eyes, like he’d found a way to smash together the negative ends of two powerful magnets; Vegeta was decidedly dead and regretfully clinging to life all at once. It was easy to tell that he’d been anxiously waiting for the opportunity to make an escape to meet what he probably believed was his only out from the situation, but at the same time, as his hand slowly unclenched to release its grip from around the tubes and he slouched back against the bed, his energy shifted toward relief, so much that he seemed ashamed by the act in which Tarble had just caught him. Dropping his heated gaze, he stared into his palms with his brows pinned together, like they’d acted on their own and ought to be punished. His fists clenched and stretched as he examined them.

“It’s you,” he stated, his hollow, scratchy voice directed into his palms.

“It’s me.” Tarble crossed the room to toss his backpack on the floor at his bedside before he collapsed into the chair, throwing a bit of melodrama into his sigh just for the fun of it. Tarble never could combat the urge to test a motherfucker. 

His brother tipped his head to look at him from beneath his tired eyelids. For all his weakness, Vegeta still managed to evoke a similarly cynical annoyance by the whole display. 

“So what? Why are you here?” he asked.

“To meet you. Or was that not obvious?”

Vegeta seemed to think on it for a moment as he stared at, or rather through Tarble, defocused as he let the idea settle, until he’d weighed it and determined it wasn’t worth his time and spat, “Well you’ve met me. Congratulations. Hope it was worth the fucking trip.” He tipped his chin toward the exit. “Don’t let it hit your ass on the way out.”

Tarble ignored his brother’s front and instead made himself comfortable. Slouching further into the chair, he stacked one foot over the other propped on the edge of his bed. He bent to dig through his backpack and uncover his gameboy, flicking the thing on and ignoring Vegeta’s aggravated moan.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Castlevania,” Tarble replied without looking up from the screen.

“I said I didn’t want any visitors.”

“Well, you’re stupid.”

Vegeta tried to laugh, out of dismay rather than humor, but not surprisingly choked on the sound and turned toward the opposite wall in a fit of deep, painful coughs before he gave up and threw himself back against the mattress to wipe the phlegm from his lips in silence.

“You should probably quit smoking while you’re at it. Be a shame to die of lung cancer after you make it through this shit,” Tarble quipped, just to see how far he could push him in this state. Vegeta wasn’t a fucking baby. They just pretended he was too fragile and volatile to confront.

His brother didn’t acknowledge the comment beyond the sharp dart of his middle finger in Tarble’s direction. After which, he went radio silent. Without demanding that Tarble leave, Vegeta instead shifted his weight to make himself comfortable, as much as he could be in withdrawal; pulling the blanket up to his chin, he turned to face the opposite wall. 

For the next few hours, the only sounds in the room were the steady bleep of Vegeta’s monitors, his exasperated sighs as he failed to sleep, the obnoxiously loud tick of the clock on the wall—the same kind that drove him nuts in every Shenron Academy classroom—and the eight-bit track of his video game. Not even a nurse dropped in to check on them, which was disappointing given what the hospital staff had promised Vegeta’s friends in the waiting room.

Bulma repeatedly called and texted, buzzing his phone against thigh with venomous threats that shifted toward desperate pleas the longer he refused to answer them. He should have felt bad. He wanted to. But those people were too self absorbed to be helpful at the moment. He was managing his brother just fine on his own, and they would only disrupt the fragile ecosystem he’d established for Vegeta under his care, or his silent observation—whatever it was that was working. They’d tip it with the domino of their own drama to send him careening in a spiral of distress and shame and guilt and giving up. She’d probably called his parents by now, but that too seemed infantile in the grand scheme. Even if his parents were the hypocritical assholes they’d proven to be before, what the hell could they actually say to make him regret being with his true family when he needed him? Wouldn’t be very Christian of them, that was for damned sure.

The longer the clock ticked, the more uncomfortable his brother became. The intervals with which he tossed and turned condensed from long minutes to short seconds until he couldn’t lay still at all and churned wildly against the mattress. Sweat began to spill across his brow, soaking his face and wetting the hair around his ears, like his pores had even given up their fight and broke their levees to let him drown. Though sweat on his skin was nothing compared to whatever was happening inside of him. Vegeta’s teeth were clenched in a permanent grimace—the pained grunts that snuck between them visceral enough to make Tarble’s own guts tighten in camaraderie. It was too hard to focus on the game anymore, and the console sat chirping in his limp hands.

“What does it feel like?” 

Vegeta had gone fetal, curling his knees to his chest as he panted, “Feels like... you should leave.”

He managed to meet Tarble’s eyes, and when Tarble shook his head mutely, he went on in broken spurts, “It feels like… every bone is a knife… and every muscle is gripping them… tight... and cutting… I can’t… I mean that’s the easy part.”

It was the physical part, Tarble gathered. What was happening to his head on top of it was perhaps the real problem. Being numb for a decade, those feelings didn’t just disappear, they went someplace; they were buried like the victims of some serial killer with a decade’s worth of corpses that were now being exhumed all at once. Vegeta was fucked. Even without knowing him, just from the tabloids, it was easy to tell that skeletons spilled from his overstuffed closet. And of course yesterday’s article was the petrified corpse of a fucking mammoth in the room that neither of them were prepared to acknowledge.

Tarble couldn’t do anything to ease his pain—his transition, maybe, was a more positive way to spin it. But he couldn’t sit back and play games anymore either, and he certainly couldn’t sleep, despite the sting in his eyes that begged them to close as the sunlight began to creep through the window. He pulled his feet from the edge of the bed and scooted his chair closer. As he scanned his brother’s tense, shaking form, his mind searched his own memories for a clue, a suggestion, something, anything that might ease Vegeta’s struggle and console him. But there was nothing in Tarble’s real life experiences to draw from except movies. He’d never been comforted in the way his brother needed. The nearest examples he imagined were war films, soldiers that embraced their wounded comrades, holding them as they begged for morphine and their mamas and home. That’s what Vegeta really wanted, to slip away painlessly back to their mother and Saiya, all of which was just a stupid fantasy. Saiya and their mother didn’t exist in anything but the memories and pictures of the people that knew them. Death was death. It wasn’t a fucking homecoming. And it was the one outcome he was suddenly here to prevent. 

Tarble stretched his arm to lay over Vegeta’s shoulders, and when he didn’t protest and only continued to shudder uncontrollably beneath the limb, Tarble took a breath and tightened his grip, wrapping the other arm to hug him. As he dipped his forehead to meet Vegeta’s sweaty brow, his brother sipped at the air like it was a precious commodity, like the place was a vacuum and his breath was running short. All those tiny inhales built up, and Vegeta released their pressure with a force in one loud, hearty sob. The moment the first one was let from its cage, the rest just kept coming. He wailed like a wounded animal. Tarble felt the back of his shirt cinche, fisted tight at his back where his brother grabbed him and pulled. Maybe it was unconscious and he didn’t know or have any control over what he was doing, but it meant everything, validated every decision Tarble had made since Bulma told him the truth of their relationship. They were family, and they needed each other, and if asiding his brother’s current delusionary state of mind, Vegeta seemed to know it too. As their foreheads pressed together, Vegeta’s hands continued to wring the material of his shirt, pulling with such a force that Tarble had to yank him by the forearms to relieve the tension of his collar against his throat. 

The embrace was fleeting and uncomfortable, and Vegeta kept squirming, unable to settle with the way his muscles tensed against his will. His face clenched, grimacing at every cramp and spasm. That alone, his obvious distress would have been enough to send Tarble shouting for a doctor, but he thought he wouldn’t need to beg one when Vegeta’s rising blood pressure and racing heart triggered the monitors to blare in alarm. It was the kind of thing he assumed would beckon a nurse, at the very least to check on him, but none came.

The monitors trilled rapidly, and Vegeta struggled to push himself up on his forearms; his eyes pinched shut as his stomach lurched beneath him. He hurled some yellowish bile over the edge of the bed. Tarble darted for the trash can and held it to catch the rest of his brother’s vomit. 

“What the hell are you doing? That’s not what that’s for!” an old, tired looking nurse scolded him from the doorway as he held up the bin to let his brother hurl.

“Well, what the fuck are we supposed to do? Where the hell have _you_ been?”

“I have a dozen other patients!” she whined. What she meant was, she had a dozen other patients that weren’t junkies, and Vegeta was last on her list, despite the fact that he was famous, or maybe _to_ spite the fact. She probably assumed he was some rich punk whose condition was self-inflicted and didn’t deserve the same level of care she perhaps dealt to those with more obvious illnesses or physical ailments. He was blacklisted because she believed he deserved what was coming to him. His disease, in her mind, wasn’t so innocent. He’d done it to himself. She didn’t even seem to notice that his heart monitor had been thrown into a screaming fit. Instead, as she approached the instrument, she merely punched a button a bunch of times, as if tuning down music that was too loud. 

“You got something that can help that? A fucking beta blocker? Anything?”

“He’s throwing up. That always increases a patient’s blood pressure,” she grumbled, watching the numbers blink with a tight expression, as if trying to convince herself that they weren’t a problem—out of sight, out of mind, she really believed that if she reduced the noise it would go away.

She was gone as fast as she’d come, popping in just to turn off the annoyance of a junkie’s spiked BP. But she was wrong.

Even when Vegeta managed to stop hurling—or dry heaving if one was being accurate, the man not having anything left in his system to regurgitate but still forced to go through the motions—his blood pressure still continued to climb. Whatever the nurse had done to stop the monitors from blaring didn’t last for more than an hour. As Vegeta continued to toss and moan and heave—his limbs shuddering like he was hypothermic contrasted by the sweat that continued to ooze from his pores—the monitors began to scream again. It didn’t take a medical professional to understand that he was going to have a seizure or a heart attack or both if they didn’t do something to calm him down. Tarble tore himself from his brother’s side and pushed his head out the door to shout down the hall for help at anyone that would listen.

A doctor, a real doctor with a lab coat and lapel pin that read his credentials, shuffled briskly down the hall and pushed his way into the room. Though, after a brief examination, he seemed to have come to the same conclusion as the nurse before him, muttering about having already giving him medication to reduce his blood pressure.

“It's a panic attack. I can give him more clonidine, but anything else is counterproductive,” the doctor claimed, unnecessarily reminding them that Vegeta was a drug addict, and their hands were tied as far as what they were willing to prescribe.

As Tarble stared down at his brother, the doctor and nurse at his back, he watched Vegeta writhe in distress and listened to his monitors blare; there was no amount of holding and hugging or support he could give him to stop it. Vegeta was on his own; Vegeta wanted to be on his own, and if the hospital staff weren’t willing to curb his panic attack with more medications, understandably, he could only summon one, long shot idea to ease the pressure and prevent him from seizing in a fit of despair.

***

Bulma’s eyes darted open and her nostrils flared with a sharp suck of breath when she was shook awake. As the fog cleared from her vision to recognize Tarble standing over her, she remembered where she was and pushed herself up from where she’d passed out in Goku’s lap to snap at him, “Tarble! What the fuck!”

The wild urgency in his eyes had her smother the impulse to slap the teen so hard he’d find his insensitive ass landed back in West City. Of all the crazy myriad emotions flooding her head throughout the long night she spent in the waiting room, resentment for what Tarble had done was disproportionately the strongest. It was jealousy, at its core. She wanted so badly to be where he was that the longer she was forced to wait, and the asshole didn’t respond, she couldn’t find anything else to distract her torment save for imagining all of the vindictive ways she could make the kid wish he’d never met her. But Tarble didn’t do it to thwart her; he did it because he had the opportunity, and she would have done the same thing given the chance. 

“What’s going on?” She launched herself from the chair and grabbed Tarble by the forearm. 

“Shh!” He put his finger to his lips, but Goku was already waking up, lolling his head around as he dragged a palm across his face. Her friend sat frozen, glumly staring at the floor between his knees. Everything from the droop of his face to the slouch of his shoulders made her regret the way she’d handled the situation. She’d put Goku through the ringer too, and now had multiple reasons to feel like shit as she recalled the horrible things she said to him, blaming him, of all people, for this.

“Bulma, if I take you to him, do you promise to be cool?”

“What?” she asked dumbly to the air rather than Tarble, nodding at the same time. Fuck, she was so tired and twisted, lacking confidence in a world where she was, sure, always making terrible decisions, but doing so confidently with no second-guessing, no remorse. Now she was just flailing, telling her best friend he was fucking shit up when she wasn’t any better.

“You should come too,” Tarble said to Goku, who being the dutiful soldier that he was, hoisted his weary body from the chair without a question. 

Vegeta’s brother was already striding toward the doors with Goku following at his heels. Bulma hadn’t realized what time it was until she saw them slip past the fresh nurse who’d been posted at the desk without giving them any flack beyond requesting their signatures on a clipboard. It was almost 10am, well within the hospital’s visiting hours. Eighteen and the rest of them had gone to sleep at a hotel sometime in the night, and much to Nappa’s dismay, to take care of Goku’s cat.

“Bulma!” Tarble shouted, holding the door. Both the tone of his voice and the hand he waved to summon her out of her daze seemed desperate, enough that she shuffled up to the desk to scribble her name and pass through the doors to follow him. 

As they wound through the halls at a quick clip, Bulma felt her anxiety kick up just the same. She hadn’t seen Vegeta for six weeks, and to meet him now, in this condition, felt like confronting an enemy on an open battlefield. All her lofty expectations that she’d concocted when she’d planned this trip seemed trite and foolish, especially now. What did she expect? That he’d be happy to see her? Whore around for a few weeks, get it out of his system, and come back begging for her help? He’d never trusted her enough to tell her the truth to begin with, and now that the whole world knew his darkest secret, as her feet led her closer to him, she couldn’t feel further away. 

When Tarble pushed open the door and held it, she didn’t follow Goku inside. Her feet had planted at the threshold, and for the first time since she’d met Vegeta, let him consume every corner of her world for six long months, she suddenly felt the urge to run from him. As her heel dropped behind her, stepping backward, Tarble’s eyes widened in recognition, and he lurched from the door to grab her by the wrist. 

“You can’t leave,” he stated it like it was half a hard fact and a forlorn plea. “I know you’re tired, and you’re mad, but you’ll hate yourself if you leave.”

He was only half right. Anger towards Vegeta wasn’t what held her back; it wasn’t even among the dozens of crushing thoughts and feelings that kept her feet weighted to the floor. 

“I just... I don’t know what to say to him. And-” She didn’t know how to explain to him that she was afraid that he’d reject her, like he’d done so many times before. Her bottom lip curled to bite between her teeth and she bounced on her heels, refusing to look at the kid as she wiped her teary eyes with the back of her hand. 

“You don’t have to say anything. You just have to be here. Bulma, please? I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, and he needs you. You love him, don’t you?”

To a fault, she did. Even if he never returned the feeling, she’d be lying to herself to say that she didn’t. 

“This very second,” she said aloud, repeating her own mantra with a nod, swallowing her doubt under the guise of the hopeless, stupid romantic she was deep down. She wasn’t the type to run away from a challenge; she ran towards them, and Vegeta had proven to be the greatest challenge of her life. 

Despite all his hangups, through the many nights she laid awake to wonder if she was out of her goddamn mind for staying with him, for expending so much time and energy to figure him out—gathering evidence from the people around him, reading between the lines of what he managed to say, deducing it all into theories with the far-fetched hope to fix him—there remained an unexplainable factor, like some undiscovered subatomic particle. It was a thing that she’d never been able to deduce through logic. A part of him had been soldered into her soul in a way that didn’t fit any equation. 

She couldn’t run from him anymore than she could run from herself. Loving a person wasn’t some Disney fairy tale where they all lived happily ever after. It was fucking hard, constantly, and especially given that the prince, in her case, wasn’t even capable of loving himself. Expecting that he’d return the overture she’d extended to him countless times was stupid, and she knew it was stupid. But it didn’t mean she should give up, especially now. Tarble was right. She was fucking tired and scared and overwhelmed and yet, despite all logic, very much in love. Leaving him now wouldn’t solve anything; it would only serve to smother her fear of rejection in the moment and throw her into a worse state of regret a moment later; it would hurt him, irreparably, when he couldn’t afford to be. She pulled her wrist out of Tarble’s grip and pushed past him through the door. 

Stepping into that room was like wading into a hazy dream; there were people and noises all around her, but those details seemed faded into the background and unimportant. Vegeta’s own details weren’t even in focus, only the pull of him, like the moon and the Earth grabbing each other in orbit. She couldn’t even recall crossing the room, just the familiar scent of him as she found her arms twined around his neck and her face buried into his shoulder. Every doubt was quickly smothered by his hands that grasped her back, clinging and pulling her flush against him. His heart beat against her chest with the speed and force of double kick pedals on a bass drum, and she found herself hushing into his ear in soft, breathy tones trying to calm him, trying to pull him back from the dark place in his head where he was drowning like a fearful child, delicate and lost in a feverish nightmare. 

A hot expel of breath hit her neck with a strangled cry that woke her from her semi-daze to recognize that the medical staff were scolding her for the intrusion, telling her to get off the bed, that Tarble was giving them lip in equal measure, and that the instruments Vegeta was attached to were blaring wildly. She hadn’t even heard them. And she wasn’t about to consider them now. Vegeta was saying something, muffled weakly into her shoulder between his sobs and repeated like a scratched CD, but now that her head had somewhat cleared, she picked up the words that were vented against her throat and spun around it like a noose. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here.”

She knew what he meant. _Here_ wasn’t just a hospital. And despite that his disregard for his own life had been obvious for months, or that it was even outlined to Goku as something that was, to an extent, calculated, to hear him say it outloud felt like being flung from a plane with a broken parachute, grasping wildly for the safety cord and hoping it would open. There was nothing in the world she wanted more than catch him in free fall, to slow the hard kick of his heart like breaking clouds. But she couldn’t think of the right words to say. Even as she held him close, it felt as if he was slipping between her fingers and giving up as his grip on her relaxed. 

The incessant beeps of his monitors began to slow, and Bulma, in a moment of panic tore her head from his shoulder to stare wide-eyed at the doctor with her mouth open, trying to find her voice to shout at the dolt to do something, but he was staring back, blinking rapidly with a puzzled tilt of his head, all of them were, except for Tarble whose eyes were narrowed above a half-cocked smile. This was good? 

The surly nurse in the corner confirmed as much as she turned to Tarble and said with an air of wonder, “Well, there’s your beta blocker.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took some fictional liberties with his withdrawal just to keep from dragging this chapter out unnecessarily, particularly the speed of it. Even with being dosed with a shot of Naloxone and continuous IV drip of it, he probably still wouldn't get into the height of it for at least 24 hours, even on heroine which has a much shorter half-life than the pills he was taking prior. I've shortened quite a bit, considering his last dose was probably around 4pm, and he was peaking around 10am the next day.
> 
> And I'm not sure if a doctor would refuse to give a patient benzos to curb a panic attack during withdrawal if that's a drug they've abused in the past, but I made it such! AYE, I'm not a doctor! So just saying... this is minimally researched fiction, and I've been erring on the side of drama. It's also why the medical scenes are told from a seventeen-year-old boy's POV, cus he ain't an expert either. :P
> 
> Also, the medical staff being inept jerks is purely for dramatic purposes. There are a lot of real life stories of medical professionals treating drug addicts poorly, but I don't doubt the majority treat them with the same dignity as anyone else. It's just more interesting for Vegeta to endure the worst.
> 
> Sorry for all the notes. But I'm getting into heady territory, which makes me nervous. Anyways... If it wasn't obvious, this chapter was split in half. Both because I wasn't happy with the end and still need to tweak some bits, and also because it was 12K words!! But on the bright side, the next half should be up in the next week or so! 
> 
> Thank you for sticking with a debbie downer of a story. I feel like it was kind of a bait and switch from the description and first few chapters, so if you're reading this still... THANK YOU AND I LOVE YOU.


	33. Holding On and On (Part Two)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get ready for a Bulma info dump. 
> 
> Thank you for beta reading [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan)! I should really start paying you. These chapters are so damn long! 
> 
> And thank you for another cutie [Starrcrossrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrcrossrose/)
> 
> Share the arts on [Tumblr](https://starrcrossrose.tumblr.com/post/185649126748/home-for-rockykelboa-and-her-fic-cut-from) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Starrcrossrose/status/1140493353110257665)!
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

Bulma shifted to lay fully on the bed and pulled Vegeta down with her. His breathing had evened, and his heart rate, though still quite elevated, had slowed to a safe and steady enough beat that the doctors left them alone. The relief in the room was palpable as Goku threw himself next to them in the chair to run his fingers roughly through his hair, and Tarble straight up laid across the floor at Goku’s feet with his head pillowed atop his backpack. The kid closed his eyes, she presumed, for the first time in more than a day. 

Vegeta, though immeasurably better than he’d been minutes ago, still squirmed restlessly against her with his face buried beneath her chin, and no amount of soothing strokes down his back could quell the waves of tension that gripped every muscle and sent him huffing and moaning his discomfort in hot breaths against her chest. As she traced her fingers up and down over the thin material of the hospital gown, the evidence of his deterioration since she’d last laid with him was plainly felt in the vertebrae of his spine that protruded like the fin of a fish, all skin and bone. While he’d always been lean, he was garishly thin now, like he’d lost at least fifteen, maybe twenty pounds, and mapping out each bone in his back, the sharp edges of his shoulder blades, the ridges of his ribs and hips was making her sick. 

Meeting Goku’s eyes, he seemed to recognize the disturbed thoughts and said defeatedly, “I’ve tried. He won’t eat.”

That wasn’t all. Whenever he’d fling his restless head the other direction, she noticed the gash that stretched across his temple, nearly two inches long. It clearly should have been sutured, but by now weeks old and scabbed over, it would leave yet another angry scar to add to his collection.

“Kami, Goku. What the hell happened?”

Goku hesitated before he muttered the name _Frieza_ quietly under his breath, reluctant to extrapolate further with Vegeta in earshot. Sick as he was, the moment he heard the name whispered from Goku’s lips, Vegeta shot one eye open to glare at him before he pinched it shut again. As much as Bulma needed to understand what the hell had transpired over the past six weeks, now was not the time to play catch up. They needed to sleep, Tarble and Goku at least. She wouldn’t sleep until he could, which as the day wore on and he continued to struggle, was proving to be an impossibility.

Vegeta was in the thick of withdrawal, like a feverish child tying blankets into knots as he tossed and turned, sweating and moaning as he spun himself around in loops. It came in cycles, his distress escalating as he grabbed at her, nuzzling his face against her neck before he was flinging himself wildly in the opposite direction, back and forth, again and again until it built up and, finally, he’d hurl into the wastebasket. Every once in a while he’d speak, but the words he managed to say weren’t the ones she wanted to hear. They were the delusions of a sick person she refused to indulge, crying for them all to leave, not so much because he didn’t want them to witness his withdrawal like he was embarrassed by it, which knowing him, he was but didn’t have the energy to contend with.

This plea felt different, like he didn’t view what was happening to him in a positive light, and in his mind, he wasn’t purging his addiction as much as he was losing some necessary part of him—the protective cloak that inhibited him and everyone in his radius from feeling the true depth of his depression in its purest form. He was afraid of feeling and being forced to confront all of the experiences that summed up his life head on, for better or worse. Now that he was impelled to look at them, unclouded and free of drugs, he was resistant, staring into a mirror with his eyes pinched shut. In his mind, she and Goku and Frieza and Nappa and Eighteen and Whis and Raditz and Tarble and whoever the fuck were all the same because he’d numbed himself to a level that couldn’t differentiate friends and foes, at least not objectivly. Everyone in Vegeta’s mind was his enemy until proven otherwise, a bar he’d set so high not even his own mother would pass it had she been alive to meet him now. 

Medical staff came and went throughout the day, changing IVs, checking stats, leaving meals that, even if he wasn’t refusing through some twisted principle, he still didn’t have the stomach to eat as he barfed almost on an hourly schedule. The only times he left the bed were to pee, and weak as he was, he’d still threaten to fight Goku and Tarble for trying to help him, claims neither of them would dare to acknowledge the pathetic irony of his inability to follow through with. But he needed help with all the cords and tubes that were attached to his body, taped to his chest and stuck in his hands. Bulma didn’t want to play the know-it-all girlfriend, forcing her assistance on him, but he protested less with her than them.

The others came back to sit in the waiting room early in the evening, hoping he was well enough to visit, but Vegeta was barely capable of stringing two words together that weren’t morbidly dire, much less face an onslaught of his peers, especially Nappa and Eighteen with whom he had so much conflicting, often contentious, memories of that Bulma told the staff, without any remorse, to turn them all away. Her request was only partly obliged when eventually Nappa poked his head in the door.

“Do you guys want some food? I bought, well… the band, I guess, bought pizza.” 

Goku perked up at the word and shoved Tarble awake with his foot. As the two slowly roused themselves, Nappa seized the opportunity to examine the current condition of the only person for which he’d ever been held responsible. Despite how ungrateful and shitty Vegeta had been to him going on fifteen years, and how many countless times Nappa had threatened to cut ties, pushed to the brink of his understanding, he never followed through because it was pointless to try. Cutting Vegeta out of his life would be to cut out a malignant tumor that had already metastasized. Deep down, he loved the cancerous little prick. Every time he’d warned her about him felt a bit prophetic, as if he knew that once she let Vegeta in, he was impossible to be rid of, like some adorable, abandoned and abused puppy that nipped at the well-intentioned hands that tried to pet him. Nappa was a good person, as much as Eighteen when she could bring herself to suffer an emotion. And Bulma hated that she was hiding him away like Tarble had done, but at the same time, Nappa wasn’t beyond blame. And the fact that Vegeta wasn’t asleep but pretended to be when Nappa came in, signaled that she made the right decision to shield him, quite literally with her arms wrapped around his head to hide him from the man. 

After they’d gone, a new doctor poked in that almost looked too young to be one, yet despite the fact, she seemed more interested in Vegeta’s well being than the others so far, and as she took one look at his exhausted, feverish state, churning in Bulma’s arms, she smiled sympathetically and explained that she was a psychologist called in from a neighboring hospital.

“I’d just like to ask him a few questions, if you don’t mind. It won’t take long.”

Bulma felt his grip squeeze around her in protest. 

A psychologist, that’s what he fucking needed, if he’d ever find the humility to speak to one. But somehow Bulma feared that he was too locked up to ever consider the option. He’d been to rehab, and he didn’t think highly of it, but maybe that was because it was court ordered and he was sent to a state run clinic in North City, a place that wasn’t known for its hospitality even in a luxury hotel, much less a rehab facility for criminals.

“Vegeta, I’ll be right outside the door.”

He groaned and rolled away from her in a motion that was so quick it felt stubbornly childish, especially when he yanked the pillow over his head and held it there. 

Bulma smiled mechanically at the doctor with pressed lips. “I don’t know that now’s a good time.”

“It never is,” she answered, matter of fact. 

The female Doogie Howser was right. Clinging to her in bed hiding wasn’t ever going to cure him. As much as he’d hate it, sooner or later, she’d have to kick him from the nest. Vegeta had to face the world eventually, and to throw weight at the matter, because of who he was, he’d have to face it publicly, too. According to Nappa’s string of texts, those paparazzi were still hanging around the parking lot, and headlines of his overdose caught fire in the industry. It was all anyone was talking about, with some of them even postulating, despite having no way of knowing, that it was an attempted suicide. They’d never give him peace for as long as he lived, and he couldn’t confront them alone. He couldn’t do it even under the care of her, his best friends, nor his brother. Save for Tarble, they’d all tried the self-help route, and he only balked them, convinced that drugs were the answer, and when those didn’t work, well… those particular reporters were either lucky or more oracular than the rest.

As much as she didn’t want to, she lifted her stiff limbs from the bed, feeling the weight of their resistance as she shuffled across the floor to leave him buried beneath a tantrum. It shouldn't have bothered her that the doctor was so young, but it did somehow. And as Bulma passed her as she left the room, the girl’s reassuring smile did nothing to boost her confidence. She was maybe thirty, which meant on top of not having much experience, if she wasn’t living under a rock, she knew who he was. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t be trusted, but that Vegeta would never dare to give her a chance. He didn’t respond to his peers quite as well as he did to the generations above him, like her own parents, and it didn’t take a psychologist to understand why. The poor girl came all this way from another hospital set-up to fail. He was either going to remain feigning comatose, or he was going to eat her alive.

Bulma perched on her tiptoes, watching through the small window on the door as the girl sat down and calmly tried to beg the pillow from his head. Of course, he wouldn’t budge. This disastrous stalemate went on, very painfully, for more than fifteen minutes where Vegeta played possum to all of her attempts to speak to him. From Bulma’s vantage, he didn’t even appear to be breathing, and she kept glancing to the monitors to be sure that he hadn’t smothered himself.

Thank Kami her phone rang to distract her from some poor rookie doctor’s worst nightmare. It was her mother, and even seeing the words _Your Mom_ blink across the display felt like some necessary antidote, as if telepathy was real and her mother sensed her distress. It was weird how many times that happened, how somehow everytime Bulma was overwhelmed in a way she couldn’t fix with a good night’s sleep, her mother was calling, always about some unrelated topic that eventually dragged out until, whether Bulma prompted or not, the truth of her angst was revealed. The woman had a sing-songy way of making problems disappear, like she was Mary fucking Poppins.

Unfortunately, Bulma didn’t have time to answer because the young doctor had given up. The door opened, and she held it for a moment, and without divulging her failure, only smiled a bit sheepishly and said, “Thanks for waiting. Perhaps he’ll feel up to it tomorrow.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right.” If maybe meant never in a thousand years in a thousand different universes. 

Bulma hopped back into bed to pry the pillow out of his hands. He let her, lifting his head an inch, just enough to slip it under, but he wouldn’t open his eyes, which meant he didn’t want to talk to her either. She could only mold herself against his back, press her face into his neck, and snake an arm around him to thread her fingers through his hand. 

“They’re just trying to help you.” 

He didn’t respond with anything more than a deflated sigh. Yet even if he wouldn’t acknowledge her or anyone, the past half hour or so was the longest he’d laid in one spot without convulsing and pitching round and round the tiny bed, and he hadn’t puked in a while. It seemed the worst of his withdrawal was over—a hypothesis the doctor confirmed before he left for the night, suggesting that Vegeta would likely be discharged in the morning.

Goku and Tarble had come back by then, and as much as they all should have felt relieved by the doctor’s diagnosis, the eyes they traded between each other held the same fatalistic anxiety. What Vegeta would decide to do after being released was anyone’s guess. But it seemed, as much as his appetite, accepting professional help wasn’t currently on the menu, which only put the pressure on her. 

Once the weight of the responsibility settled, the idea of taking him home to defrag his crazy mind herself felt as cynically impossible as leaping through the folds of time to evacuate his home before the bombs dropped. _That_ event was the catalyst that set his life on this track, as far as she could deduce. Though trying to figure all of the events in between that led from meeting Nappa as a child, to his preteens as a runaway where he was basically homeless and legitimately a criminal, to Icejin where he was suddenly thrust into a position he thought would save him but only put him under a microscope publicly while he was silently tortured in the background, then to jail and rehab, and shortly after West City and her—all of it in hindsight felt strangely plotted. But that was the bias of hindsight making things feel more predictable than they actually were. It wasn’t real, and it wasn’t hard to decide if Tarble’s bitter atheism was right, and everyone’s lives were just random, pinged off each other like crashing atoms—actions and reactions and nothing more. 

If there was something out there guiding them, if even just a little, toward some better destiny, she was stupid for ever entertaining it. Bulma was never religious. Shit, she was a kami-damned scientist, but somewhere underneath the ordered beauty of the scientific method, she was a sloppy romantic most of all. Privilege aside, it was one reason she never plotted her own future in a professional sense, deferred it for years, because it all seemed so mundane and robotic and uninspired compared to the lively relationships she held with the more artistic people around her that society would classify as deadbeats, Goku being a prime example. The idea of going into an office at someone else’s idea of reasonable hours, wearing someone else’s idea of reasonable clothing was as nauseating as reading _Brave New World_ for the first time. It was horribly constructed, glorified serfdom that sapped every ounce of one’s free will. If she’d wanted to do it, she would have already graduated, gotten a high-paying job or worked for her father and married Yamcha. But she couldn’t bring herself to settle for a relationship or a job that meant sacrificing the crazy and vivacious person she was deep down for a stale and mediocre existence.

A late night concert on a Tuesday spent looking for love always felt more intrinsically human than the idea of miserably forcing herself to go to bed for a nine to five. And when it came to love, it wasn’t any different. She was never going to settle for some square she met in a corporate laboratory, act square around him, and make square babies.

Bulma had always been fated to some peculiar, alien soul in some unexplainable, fantastic dream—someone who didn’t bow to social norms and whose every motive was his and his alone, a person who refused to abide by any construct that tried to mold him. And once she found him, they would be a force, like two separate pieces of the same soul bound together—the kind of couple people spoke about for decades like Johnny Cash and June Carter. Their lives would be intrinsically intertwined with no boundaries between them and nobody to tell them what was or wasn’t a proper way to be or behave at a certain age, as if individuality had a deadline. They’d balk the mold together doing exactly the things that made them feel alive, and at the same time, tied them together as partners. They’d live to a ripe old age, and when one passed, the other would immediately follow, like a spirit torn in half and separated across two realms whose final destiny was to be reunited in an afterlife she didn’t even believe in. 

Despite that Vegeta met all of the criteria and more and felt so much like destiny, and despite adding up all the little events, the actions and reactions that brought them together, Tarble was still right. It was all random garbage and coincidence. Even if there was some intelligent creator out there that linked them to one another, to do it like this was fucking sadistic, and therefore bullshit. 

Her commitment to him, she was beginning to see, was all her own. It was _their_ own, because his inability to let her go was just as strong. All his fatalistic mind games, manipulations and infidelities were proof of the fact that he was struggling to sever the heartstrings that bound them. For months, he was desperate to break them. His self-sabotaging mind wanted to force her hate him so that she wouldn’t have to suffer from his absence, and in a twisted way, those horrible actions, as much as words ever could, proved he loved her. 

Hard as the aftermath of his overdose would be, as much as it weighed on her, she was going to endure it. He was exactly who she’d been searching for even before she’d met him, back when he was just a summer research project and the bane of Chi-Chi’s existence at that house. She didn’t know at the time, of course, that she’d laid the groundwork to fall for this person she’d never met. After that first concert, when they did finally meet—and she was too drunk to bury the crazy, forced him to come home with her, and begged him to kiss her—he still stuck around. He hugged her goddamn mother. And days later, he was there in the back of the music shop, pulling her toward him with a kind of swimming need in his eyes, like he’d been brooding about her. He chased Yamcha off and lured her in, and the moment he took the initiative to kiss her, it was game over—stupid considering what she knew now about him now; Vegeta was an advantageous playboy, and maybe he was just that good at making his marks feel special. But Vegeta was also entirely and purely himself, refusing on a heartbreaking level to be anything else. And that, most of all, his unwillingness to bend for anyone, only made her want him more. 

If he found some exit under her watch, random smashing atoms or not, she’d never recover. She’d suffer the rest of her days wondering of all the alternate possibilities—both the ones she’d had control of as much as the ones that shaped their lives before they’d ever met. What if it was her that met him at the label instead of Eighteen, or what if he was sent to West City as a child, like Tarble had been, and he’d met her instead of Nappa? If destiny was real, why did it take so long, and why was the path so horrible for him, and why did fate wait until he was giving up and dying? It was bullshit, and random, and if he survived it, Vegeta was one serendipitous fucking atom to smash into the likes of her. So then again, maybe there was some force out there looking out for them.

For the moment she was content to listen to him breathing evenly as he slept because he hadn’t slept in days, more than three, according to Goku. The hospital staff dragged another chair and a small side-table into the room to make them more comfortable and even dropped off leftover cupcakes from an employee’s birthday party, which Goku ate three out of the four before he distracted himself with the endless video games Tarble brought for the handheld. 

And Tarble, Bulma was surprised to learn, was quite the talented artist. Now that they had a hard surface and some semblance of peace, he spent the night zoned in, hunched over a thick bound booklet of paper. He used a simple Bic ballpoint pen, the kind that came a dime a dozen, of all the things the rich kid could afford. But after he’d drawn some intrinsically detailed, post-apocalyptic creation, carefully shading it with smudges of his licked fingers—a monkey standing upright in a business suit with a hazmat mask over his face in the foreground of a nuclear wasteland, the dark branches of the leafless trees being the blackest, most sinister lines in his piece—Bulma realized this kid was on another planet of holy fucking, this is some deep shit, Batman. There was no way on earth that Tarble would become a banker like his adoptive parents hoped if he really was as darkly complicated and macabre as the images expressed in the pages of his work—and there were many once she asked to see them. His life was a blank slate. He could do anything, with or without their assistance. What he was doing with ten cent pens was as cynically disturbing as it was amazing.

The four of them passed through another night in limbo, appreciating the strange camaraderie the situation demanded under the circumstances, Vegeta included, though he never said much when he was awake. At some point in the night, Goku had doubled over in the chair to lay his head on the bed, and by morning, of course, she woke to see his thick arm wrapped around Vegeta’s head with their noses nuzzled so tightly together that if Goku wasn’t straight, she’d have to wonder. 

Tarble was outside the door. She could hear him arguing with someone on the phone when a nurse arrived with food. 

“Still not hungry?” she commented as she replaced the untouched tray from last night’s dinner with breakfast. “I don’t blame him. The food here is terrible,” she winked, trying to be funny, and quickly realized her error when Bulma only glowered back humorlessly.

“When is he being discharged?” she asked. 

“Oh, um… I dunno. His doctor should be in soon to decide that. But you have some visitors!”

Kami, she’d thought the rest of them had gotten the hint and left in the van for West City. They should have been on the road by now, like Nappa said, but had they come back?

“We don’t want any-”

“Oh my god!” The voice that declaration was attached to nearly shorted out her brain, so abrupt and unexpected and bright, it felt like plugging one too many Briefs into an outlet on Christmas to blow the whole neighborhood into abject darkness. 

Her mother pushed past the nurse through the door in a polka dotted summer dress in February. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

“Mom?… I’m fine-”

 _Sweetie_ wasn’t meant for her, Bulma realized, as her mother didn’t even look at her as she tore Goku off Vegeta’s face and carelessly flung the boy aside to shake Vegeta awake.

“Oh honey,” she cooed as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and yanked him up from the bed to meet her in a one-sided hug. 

Vegeta’s eyes were as white as the first time he’d ever met her mother. He’d gotten comfortable enough with her since living with them, to the extent that Bulma often found him in her mother’s presence, listening to her never ending stream of nonsensical chatter as if it was somehow meditative as he laid across the greenhouse bench while she pruned or the kitchen chairs as she baked. But now, he certainly wasn’t expecting the woman, and stared at Bulma over her mother’s shoulder with his pupils flitting back and forth in panic. Panchy appeared from nothing like an apparition, yet as she released her grip to take his face between her palms instead, he wasn’t protesting the fact. Once the shock of it all had settled and Panchy had burnt off her excess energy to sit beside him—calm as the woman could be with her warm hands wrapped around his neck, her thumbs brushing against his cheeks as she stared at him with laser precision—Bulma wondered what the hell her mother was suddenly doing here at some bumfuck hospital in Gingertown.

As if she could read her daughter’s thoughts, she explained, “Oh dear, I tried to call you last night! I heard the news on the TV at the salon on Monday, and then those magazines… We flew out as soon as we could!”

She was saying this all to Vegeta’s face, not to Bulma, smiling at him like he’d lost a football game, not his childhood, his dignity, his will to live.

“You’re gonna be just fine, dear. We’re here for whatever you need. Do you have health insurance?”

Vegeta seemed so taken aback by her mother’s presence, much less the question that Bulma realized he’d not thought about how much his stay here had cost him until she saw the realization sweep across his face. A new dread washed over him as he tried his damndest to remain in control of his wayward emotions as he shook his head no. 

He was trying not to cry in front of her, or any of them, but her mother had a way of bending even the strongest soul to her will.

“Well, no worries dear. Money is a silly thing to think about now. You just focus on healing, okay? We’ll take care of the rest.”

Vegeta’s bottom lip curled to bite between his teeth as her mother patted his cheek with a smile. “You always have a home with us,” she said, and as her thumb continued to stroke over his cheek his breath hitched, and he began to shake his head back and forth, over and over with his face pinched, unable to stop it until he found the word _no_ , like it was hidden, dormant in his throat and waiting to croak at the first person that offered him kindness, or as he probably saw it, charity.

“Not ‘no’ dear. I don’t particularly like the word.” She pulled his head into her shoulder and held it there like some sadist waiting for him to weep. Without his pills or his heroin—as Bulma was fucking loathe to learn was a new fixation and what put him here and would murder Ratitz for later—Vegeta was an emotional drain, and if he wasn’t sulking or barfing or moaning in pain, he was trying to repress his tears. And it seemed, from the moment her mother stepped into the room and honed her attention on him, the last bastion of control he had over his bleary eyes was turned to rubble.

Tarble came back in cursing under his breath about a classmate who, Bulma gathered, turned out to be the weak link in whatever web of lies he’d spun to cover his whereabouts. He was followed by the same old nurse from the first night, and Bulma wasn’t surprised to hear the hag bitching about the amount of people in the small room as she checked Vegeta’s vitals.

“Okay,” the nurse whined, “This room is starting to feel as claustrophobic as the parking lot thanks to all your fans. Now I need to do my job, so some of you have to go.”

“Bulma,” her mother spoke up almost instantly, “You look absolutely famished. Why don’t you take these boys to get something to eat now, huh?”

She was famished, not having eaten anything but the cold slice of pizza Goku brought back last night. Yet leaving Vegeta alone with her mother to quietly weep against her shoulder was disconcerting, and a part of her felt like her mother was trying to get rid of them. As much as Panchy played the airhead, she was crafty, and Bulma suspected there was more to her surprise visit than simple parental concern.

“Shoo!” she said with a wave of her manicured nails at the door.

They slowly shuffled off, winding back through the halls, through the waiting room and past the adjacent doors to a small cafeteria, which was really just an unadorned space with a few tables and chairs and a deli cart to purchase overpriced sandwiches and coffee that was slightly better than the free stuff in the waiting room. 

They sat near the windows that faced the parking lot to witness, as the nurse described, a few dozen fans and reporters camped out in their vehicles. 

None of them felt like talking, but Bulma forced conversation if only to distract herself from the heavy pressure of her own thoughts that continued to ping around her head like a loose bullet trying and failing to lodge an idea of how she would possibly get Vegeta out of his depression intact. Keeping him clean, as mountainous as the task would be, it was only a tiny piece of the problem, a symptom of the real plague that ground him.

“Are you in trouble?” she asked Tarble, who seemed to be silently fuming over his phone call.

He picked apart his sandwich, removing all the lettuce and tomatoes before he smashed the cheap white bread back together. “I’m grounded until I turn eighteen, supposedly.” 

“Sorry.” 

“Don’t be. I’m not.” The brat seemed defiant enough that whatever his parents or the academy promised him as punishment for lying and skipping town, he wasn’t going to lay down and take it without a fight. He was kin with Vegeta fucking Ouji after all, but even if he wasn’t, he seemed like the kind of person that would still raise hell.

“Hey Bulma, your dad’s here too.” Goku pointed through the window. 

She and Goku pressed their skulls to the glass as they watched her father put out his cigarette with the toe of his shoe before entering the hospital through the front door that was held open by... Mr. Wright? Why the hell did he bring along their family counsel? She almost hadn’t recognized him without a flashy suit and tie; dressed in street clothes as if he’d been hastily summoned. She knew her parents had some ulterior motive, but what it was eluded her, especially now that whatever it was necessitated flying out to Gingertown with their lawyer.

“We should get back,” Bulma said and hurriedly shoved a crappy egg salad sandwich into her maw, eating it so fast she barely had to suffer the taste.

They walked back to the room at a fast clip, or at least she did, leaving Goku and Tarble to meander feet then yards behind. Her parents and Mr. Wright were in the hallway just outside the doors of Vegeta’s room when Bulma strode up to cross her arms before them.

“Bulma, good news! They just released him.” Her mother tipped her head toward the door, and Bulma glanced through the window to see Vegeta dressed in his street clothes, lacing up his sneakers.

“Hi Bulma. How’s university life treatin’ you?” Wright said with a nod as he stuffed a manila folder under his arm and extended his hand to shake hers. Tarble and Goku had come up behind her, and Tarble pushed into the room to be with his brother. Goku, however, seemed to understand that whatever was happening out in the hallway was perhaps of greater import in the moment. 

“What are you guys really doing here?”

“I don’t know what you mean, dear.” 

Her mother would feign ignorant until the end of her days, so Bulma looked to her father, whose silence was just as difficult to read, but he wasn’t as good of an actor, and he glanced at the lawyer before he huffed and fumbled for an explanation. 

“We… Well, your mother and I thought, and Wright agreed, that, the severity of the situation… not wanting to put all of this on you and the boy, and considering he doesn’t have parents of his own, or decision makers, a reliable party-”

“You’re the one who’s been telling us he’s a sick boy, Bulma. He can’t make these kinds of decisions on his own,” her mother interrupted her father’s aimless babble.

“What decisions?”

“Are you trying to commit him?” Goku piped behind her in a tone of divisive shock that Bulma understood was leftover from his own attempt to do just that to Raditz years ago, a move that wildly backfired and nearly cost him his brother. For more than a year, Raditz wouldn’t speak to him, and their relationship was never quite the same. But her parents wouldn’t stoop so low, would they?

“No! Of course not!” her mother said. “We just asked that he give us power of attorney over his care. That’s all.”

That’s all? She said it like it was nothing, like asking him for a ride home from the bar. They wanted Vegeta to give up control over himself to them? Not that they weren’t capable of making decisions for him; in fact, she understood the logic of it perfectly. ‘Sick boy’ was putting it mildly. But at the same time, it seemed so drastic, so neutering. And he was _her_ boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend; whatever he was, they were both adults, and Vegeta was her responsibility, not theirs. That they’d cut her out of the discussion felt so wrong and disingenuous. 

“I can’t believe you! You really thought you could show up and go behind my back to ask _my_ boyfriend to consent to giving you two the power to decide what’s best for him? And how did that brilliant plan work out for you?” she laughed coldly. 

“We knew you wouldn’t like the idea, Bulma. But you’re not yourself. You haven’t been for months. This is too much for you to handle on your own.”

“He signed the paperwork,” her father said and added, “Quite willingly.”

“He what?” She turned to Goku over her shoulder, who’s expression appeared just as skeptical. Vegeta was obsessed with control because he had so little of it. The circumstances that dictated his life were always so much bigger than him, and he constantly tried to find ways to get his power back, whether by running away, or beating Freiza within an inch of his life, or drugs, or even breaking up with her. Every time Vegeta felt cornered, he’d retaliate. It was probably the reason he wasn’t eating. He had so little control even over his own head that he went to drastic measures to prove the opposite. “What was the ultimatum?” 

“Ultimatum?” Her mother pretended like she didn’t understand the word. 

“These kinds of contracts can’t be made with ultimatums, Bulma. I assure you it was all on the up and up,” Wright said.

“I don’t know why you’re so upset, hon. You should be happy. It’s just a piece of paper, and of course we would never force either of you to do anything that isn’t in your best interest.”

“Think of it as an insurance policy in case things go awry,” the lawyer added. “Sometimes these mental health cases are best handled by a third party.”

Even if their best interests were what prompted her parents to suddenly insert themselves into the matter, it didn’t make it feel any less duplicitous, treating them like children who didn’t know any better. But she couldn’t fight their rationale. This wasn’t just about her and Vegeta. As they saw through the cafeteria window, Vegeta’s life wasn’t his own. He’d be stalked, and every move he made would be carefully documented across internet blogs and television and tabloids and spun with drama that, true or not, was marred by the hope he’d fail just to get a better story. Keeping him from failure by herself alone was like being funded by some futurist moron who threw money at a hypothetical project, like demanding she terraform Mars. It was beyond her capability, and as much as she wanted to do it, she could understand her parents point of view. Vegeta needed a stabilizing force that she couldn’t provide alone. She was too close to him and far too emotional, not to mention hurt by him. He needed parents. It’s what he’d always lacked, and her own parents were perhaps the perfect match—free spirited and non-judgemental, not to mention resourceful. Vegeta had shown them through both his clinginess toward them, his self-destruction every time he left their home, and Bulma’s own desperate cries for help that they both perhaps required more guidance than they were willing to admit. It’s what this scheme was all about. It wasn’t an ultimatum. It was the sense of familial belonging and parental guidance she’d taken for granted all her life, and of which he had none. That’s what they offered him, and he took it. Shitty as it felt to have her parents go behind her back, they were right, and Vegeta’s agreement meant that he was trying, that at least a part of him wanted to survive and was responsible enough to know that he couldn’t trust himself to do it.

When Tarble opened the door with Vegeta at his side, Vegeta looked like he’d been dragged across the pits of hell, his pale countancence contrasted sharply with the dark circles under his eyes. As he pulled his hoodie over his head and flicked his tongue nervously over his lip ring, without directing his attention up from the tips of his shoes, he said, “Please tell me there’s a backdoor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully what Bulma's parents did wasn't too out of the blue. But you know that boy can't help himself, and Bulma, despite beginning to understand that the task might be over her head, would still try to do it alone. Someone had to step in and be the adult, and why not the Briefs. He's gone to them before for help, so it made sense in my head that they'd intervene.
> 
> Also, I have a new fic for the VBO summer prompts, and like this one, Vegeta is a troubled little boi. I don't know why I enjoy torturing him so much. I think I'm the one that needs therapy, lol. Please check it out if ya have the chance! Thank you for reading! xoxox


	34. The Small of Your Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 9001 thanks to [LadyLan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan) for continuing to trudge through this story with a keen eye for my excessive use of commas and questionable phrasing.

“ _Ach_. Fuck!” Bulma was jolted awake by the weight of the kami-damned cat who, despite weighing less than ten pounds, still managed to land on her chest like an anvil to sucker punch the air from her sleeping lungs.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness of her bedroom, she wasn’t surprised to see the cold, vacant space beside her where the sheets were twisted and pillows were strewn halfway off the mattress. They’d been home for just three days and nights, through which Vegeta was becoming increasingly irritable and aloof, unable to sleep, refusing to eat, refusing to speak, for the most part unless she nagged him enough to pry a word or two—usually some profane variation of _no_ and _leave me alone_. Sleeping for herself had become a spotty activity, stolen in small doses around the clock as she couldn’t, despite his requests, leave him alone for very long. He couldn’t be trusted to be alone. 

Though he didn’t know it yet, nor should he be surprised to learn, tomorrow he was going back to rehab. She’d helped her mother narrow down the best facilities which weren’t too far away and had high success rates with complicated, high-profile cases like his. They planned to tell him in the morning, together as a family unit, now that they’d chosen one and scheduled a date of intake. As much as she dreaded the discussion, it couldn’t come soon enough. That even just a week ago she thought she would be able to handle him on her own in hindsight seemed so laughably foolish, because now she wondered if even the crème de la crème of the state’s psychiatric professionals could crack the nut. 

She trailed Scratch through hallways of her home like a beacon until she no longer needed to guess where Vegeta was as the smell of cigarettes wafted from below the door of a guest bath he appeared to have hotboxed with nicotine. 

“Kami, Vegeta. Can’t you open a window?” she asked, taking in his distress as paced around the small space pulling on a cigarette like an oxygen tank. Judging from the amount of butts he’d piled on the edge of the sink, he’d gone through almost a whole pack. 

“The alarm is on,” he reminded with snide irritation.

Her parents were surprisingly thorough about Vegeta-proofing the house, almost like they’d been coached. Everything from alcohol to tylenol had been removed, along with sharp objects and cleaning chemicals. Her father’s lab door had been re-coded, and at night, they’d set the house alarms, so if he even tried to open a window, they’d blare. Even during the day, they’d beep like a shop bell whenever he’d come and go from smoking on the balcony.

“What did you expect? You signed the papers.”

“I fucking know that!” he cried. 

He was getting shaky again. Small tremors wracked through his fingers as they pulled at his hair. 

Despite knowing the answer, Bulma had to ask, “You want to get high?”

“Oh, you’re a goddamn genius, aren’t you?” he snapped, looking her in the eyes as his expression twisted toward a kind of pained desperation, and he shook his head. “I can’t fucking do this. I hate it. I’d rather be dead.”

“You don’t mean that.” She said, too quietly. 

As if afraid of him, she refrained from stepping closer to where he turned in small circles with his fists clenched, the cigarette between his fingers dropping ash on the floor. His thick brows were drawn together, and his eyes were piercing and wet, reflected off the moonlight and starkly contrasted from the sallow darkness expressed in them as he declared, again, a pathological morbidity she wasn’t willing to acknowledge. 

“This takes time, Vegeta. It doesn’t happen overnight. You know this, and you’ve done it once before.”

He barely flitted his gaze to hers with a stubborn, almost negligible acknowledgment of the fact before his mouth ran fast with objections.

“It didn’t work though did it? And I don’t care anymore. I don’t want to do it again. I changed my mind. I don’t want it. I’m sorry.”

 _Sorry_ … It was the first time he’d ever used the word with her, and it wasn’t under the context she’d imagined, to actually seek retribution for all of his manipulations and betrayals. This was once again about him, and once again so much worse—forcing her to continue to shelve her own sense of dignity in favor of diplomacy because he was admitting that even despite signing his care over to her parents, the darker side of him was still very committed to a path of self-destruction. Not only did he not know how to curb it, he wasn’t even willing to try. And fuck if she could convince him otherwise because nothing she did or said seemed to make a dent. 

Bulma couldn’t understand what made a person like that when he had so many people that cared about him. There would be nobody else after him, none that she would ever love the same, so what was the fucking point? He’d haunt her forever. He wasn’t _fucking_ alone anymore, and that he couldn’t understand the fact in the desperate way even sane people often slipped into dark, crazy thoughts of their own in the middle of a black and lonely night, it made her say crazy things. 

“Well, you might as well kill us both then, because I refuse to live without you.”

“You’re not a fuck up, Bulma. Don’t be stupid. Just leave me the fuck alone.” He didn’t even bother to roll his eyes and just wiped his nose with the back of his hand while he continued to tread a small circular path, round and round, as if he expected her to heed him and close the door. When she didn’t move, his head whipped back to hers, and he sucked a short, tense drag off his cigarette. She sensed that her refusal, standing in the doorway like some sentry, was poking at his last nerve as his path shrunk. He pivoted back and forth with his fists tightened and arms pulled tight against his sides, and before she had time to blink, he’d spun around and shot a fist against the mirror over the sink. It shattered beneath his knuckles to spray shards of glass across the room that rained down across his feet. 

“Go the fuck away!” His scream was laced over a clangorous sob that echoed off the tiles, and he dropped to his knees in the debris, his back heaving as he tried to breathe and trap any more mutinous cries inside his throat. A palm planted flat over the mosaic he’d spilled over the tiles, and for a second, she thought he would press himself back to his feet. But he didn’t move, just knelt there watching the blood seep from his split knuckles. Bulma paled with sudden dread, and found herself at his side trying to pull him from the floor. 

“Vegeta, come on... Please?” she pleaded, wanting nothing more than to get him away from the shards of glass.

The dazed way he looked at her, so vacant and far away, felt like he was at least a hundred moons from a sensible thought, and for the first time, Bulma felt eternally grateful for her parents’ intervention. They were right. Vegeta’s most dangerous enemy was himself. And right now, she needed to quickly conjure a way to beg him up from the weapons he created before he came to the realization, if he hadn’t already, that he could use them. 

“Please get up,” she asked, trying to smooth the quake in her voice. “I want to show you something.” 

It was a front, and she didn’t know what she could possibly invent to distract him from this train of thought. Yet somehow, miraculously, he seemed to have snapped back into his head, almost as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes, and she could see the better part of him fighting back to life, at least enough to ask through an insolent expel of breath, “What?”

Yes, what? She didn’t know. She just said it to pry his attention and lure him away from whatever dark dimension his mind had escaped to. He was back though, and pushed himself up from the floor to cock his head childishly in waiting. 

“I think you’ve had enough of these for one night.” In a slow movement, she plucked the waning stub of a cigarette from between his fingers and put it out against the sink ledge with the others before slipping her fingers between his to lead him into the hallway.

While at first she didn’t know or care so much what the excuse was to drag him from the room, now that they were meandering through the halls of her home with the cat trailing behind them, she wondered what parts he hadn’t seen that would convince him she hadn’t been full of shit. Getting lost in their estate was a stressor, so he wasn’t the type to go wandering to scope it out. 

Vegeta, as much as he travelled the world through occupation, was quite a creature of habit, likely craving a kind of stability he couldn’t find in the chaos of his world, always looking for a place called home. And despite that he’d in a way adopted her own as his, she knew that the size of the venue was still overwhelming. He’d found a familiar path to and from the basic points of interest—her bedroom, the southern balcony, the kitchen, the greenhouse, the labs. All of them were places where he found, despite being a recluse, people—her people that were now, even legally speaking, his people. 

She veered off toward the library with a hope that since Vegeta liked to read, Saiyan poetry and history books at least, she could show him something worthwhile if she was capable of tracking down that kind of material amongst her father’s wall-to-wall collections, but as they cut across an unused lounge toward the library where the furniture was draped in protective tarps that were only ever unveiled for gala type events, she suddenly remembered something better. 

She dropped his hand to trot over to the corner of the room and tear the linen from a grand piano. 

Bulma spun around revealing the instrument with a kind of ta-da that felt a bit insincere, but according to everyone that visited who had even a cursory knowledge of classical music, the instrument was apparently both very expensive for its quality and its origin—once used in concert by a famous, self-taught 20th century pianist from Austria, though she couldn’t remember the composer’s name. 

Vegeta seemed interested, at least by a small amount as he slowly strolled up to meet her and punched a sullen finger against a key. 

“It’s out of tune.”

“Well, duh! We don’t really use it except for big galas and fundraisers and that kind of thing. We tune it before events.”

Vegeta had picked up a booklet of songs that had been left on the stand and began to flip through it backwards. It was a habit he had, even with magazines, always thumbing through them in reverse. At first Bulma assumed it was a funny quirk until she remembered he was foreign and Saigo read from right to left and back to front, and despite that English was the first language he learned to read in full, he still had the habit of starting everything from the back cover before he found what he wanted and read forward.

“Can you play any of them?” Bulma asked as she slipped an arm around his waist, trying to ignore the loose fit of his jeans; shit, he was so thin, they could probably share clothes by now. 

The book he held was likely a leftover relic from a grand party where they’d hired a pianist to play in the background, and she assumed it was full of famous tunes, so maybe he knew how to play some of them.

“If I practiced, maybe. Haven’t done it in a while,” he shrugged, flipping pages. “And your piano’s out of tune.” He drove home the point by poking petulantly again at the keys.

“Who cares right now if it’s out of tune? If you can’t play those, show me something that’s yours! I’d rather hear your stuff anyway.”

It was the truth. While he still wrote piano parts for his songs, Bulma could kick herself for not venturing downstairs to listen to him play them when they recorded demos at Roshi’s because he so rarely picked up anything besides electric guitars. The only time she’d ever seen him play another instrument was the acoustic when he’d practice in her bedroom or before they were dating when she crept on him in the office like a peeping tom. Now, suddenly, she would give anything to hear him play something different. She would die to hear his own moody creations that, with this instrument specifically, he reserved and buttoned away like a locked diary. Not because it wasn’t available to him; she’d delivered his damn keyboard from Eighteen, but Bulma sensed that because of his mother, either he wanted to differentiate or, more likely, the instrument struck memories of her that he preferred not to think about. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to goad him.

“Sorry, forget it. It was rude to ask.” She squeezed him again, as if to make a show of understanding. Vegeta dropped the book against the bench and turned toward her, staring at her with an unreadable intensity that was oddly provoking the way his tongue flicked the back of his lip ring. 

It was a bad idea, she knew, even before she’d betrayed her own good sense to pull her body closer and crashed her lips against his. But it was so senselessly desirous at the same time, not having kissed him in months, and despite that he didn’t hold onto her, his mouth parted to let their tongues sweep together in a kind of soft and cautious rediscovery. The toasted flavor of American Spirits always seemed to linger in his kisses, but it was so familiar and often mutual that she didn’t care. She reveled in the feeling of his fingertips that began to lightly trace up the outside of her bare thighs and over the material of her shorts before they settled at the small of her back. Their kiss deepened, full of rash and reckless longing. Her arms spun around his neck and he pulled back with equal force to press their hips flush together until she could feel the hardness of his thick erection against the crease of her pelvis. 

A meek voice at the back of her head questioned the sanity of the act, as if begging her to consider his state of mind, not ten minutes ago smashing mirrors and crying on the floor of the bathroom, but before she could contend with her own conscience, Vegeta was lurching away. He’d twisted himself out of her arms almost violently and stumbled backward so precipitously that he nearly tripped off his feet but caught himself against the piano. The look with which he regarded her was wild, incensed in alarm, his pupils darting back and forth in a kind of bewilderment, as if perhaps he believed that what had just transpired between them was one-sided and he was tricked. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he spat. 

Bulma fumbled for something to say, unsure of what the hell he was asking in the first place. What was wrong with _her_? Nothing! He kissed her back! She couldn’t stand the look on his face, so twisted, borderline hateful, as if he could spray bullets from the sharp pits of his stormy, black eyes. None of this was her fault, and the fact that he’d spin it as such wasn’t just erroneous, it was cruel.

“What the hell is wrong with me!? Care to be more specific?”

The vicious, pointed sneer didn’t let from his face, and for a moment, he opened and closed his mouth in a way that suggested he was truly baffled that she didn’t understand what he was asking. Bulma remained where she stood but cocked her head and shook it in the negative to signal that whatever the hell crazy accusations he was projecting onto her, she didn’t get, so he might as well come out with it.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Nice? Is that what offends you? You don’t want me to be nice?”

Kami, he didn’t know what he wanted and was grasping at straws, but in a way that was wholly Vegeta, being cryptic yet completely enraged by the fact at the same time.

For the life of her she couldn’t grapple with his sudden outburst, but for once he seemed to clue her in enough to suggest that it was her very support with which he was contentiously opposed, like he was back to his manipulative ways, feeling guilty, and instead of owning up to it, he was classically trying to spin it on her to toss her off his back. By now, she knew what his game was, and it meant he had another plan brewing in his sick mind, but if it wasn’t drugs, then what?

“Is this why you’re not eating? If you can’t shoot your stupid veins full of poison, you’re gonna starve yourself to death? Are you really that desperate?”

A cold, haunting laugh left his lips, and he turned away for a moment to run a hand through his coarse hair before he spun back.

“I don’t think you get it. Did Kakarot by some miracle really not clue you in? Do you wanna know how many people I hooked up with out there? ‘Cause it was probably one for every day, and that’s just people not fucks! And it was fucking easy too. I didn’t even have to try. Pick of the litter kind of shit ‘cause someone was always hanging around. And even if there wasn’t anything appealing backstage, I’d find them just the same.”

He was doing this on purpose, trying to provoke her into leaving him. It was the most wretched play he had and the one he defaulted to ever since he learned of its effectiveness when she exploded on him for that night with Eighteen, a night that ironically, according to both of them, was actually nothing. Though Vegeta was right about Goku, who without trying still managed to clue her in to what Vegeta was doing. But never had she expected him to relay the facts himself, and especially not this way with such odious blatancy. Her pulse kicked up to beat inside her head, banging between her ears like a war drum, a protective warning meant to signal to herself that this person who could be so hateful wasn’t worth the heartache. He was though, in so many ways if he’d give himself the chance. All the heinous vitriol spewed from his mouth now was the language of a person who was so damaged and strapped to his habit that he’d do and say anything to get back to it. The only thing in this world Vegeta loved more than her, she could see with perfect clarity, were opiates, and it was that dent in his mind talking, still talking… 

“How do you wanna measure it, Bulma? By persons or fucks? ‘Cause if it’s the latter, I’d guess at least two to four times a day, so what’s that? I can’t do that kind of math in my head. You’re the genius. Can you count averages? You fucking figure it out, cause I can’t even remember their faces much less their fucking names! You’ve been dying to know what happened the past two months. Well that’s what happened! So why the _hell_ don’t you hate me yet!?” 

It was some of the craziest, messed up shit she’d ever stuck around to hear, and despite knowing that it was his desperate way of bucking her, hoping she’d become so enraged that she’d force her parents to let him go, it was pathetic and sad just as much as it was maddening to witness the level he’d stoop to escape because he was craving a hit this badly. Even though she couldn’t be fooled by the act, whatever minuscule understanding she had for it was temporarily on hold. Vegeta’s mission to incense her to hate him had been woefully accomplished, so much that Bulma was fully aware when her leg wound back, recoiled like a heavy spring before she let it fly to kick Vegeta as hard as she could right between the legs.

He went down instantly, dropped to the floor in a heap, clutching his nuts with both hands as his body curled into itself and he ground his forehead into the floor. The way he heaved, wheezing and choking like he’d lost his wind failed to stoke any sympathy, and she stood over him like a cat enjoying the show of a half eaten cockroach deservedly pained and writhing against the floor until she decided it was time to finish him off.

The second he’d caught a hint of breath, she squatted down next to him, maintaining a kind of casual hubris with her hands folded between where elbows rested on her knees. 

“Look at me, motherfucker.”

Vegeta tipped his head to peer at her with wet, reddened eyes, his teeth clenched in pain as he sucked small sips of air between them.

“I hope that was fun for you because that was the last fucking mind game you’ll ever play with me. I’m done. No more games. No more ambiguity. We’re fucking dating again, and you’re going to be as faithful to me as a fucking nun to the lord.” She parted her hands to thread her fingers through his hair before she set her palm to rest against his burning temple, smearing the beads of sweat that pebbled across his grimaced brow as she brushed her thumb in soothing, repetitive motions over his the crease of his frown. “And you’re going to get your precious dick swabbed if you ever want to get laid again.”

With as hard as she’d kicked him, he wasn’t getting up anytime soon. He was at her mercy, hunched like a naughty dog with his tail tucked between his legs. If Vegeta didn’t want her to be nice anymore, his wish was fucking granted, though perhaps not in the way he thought he wanted. If there was one thing she’d learned about Vegeta through their contentious relationship it was that, as talented as he was at his craft—and he really was a beautiful, prolific piece of work—he was far more gifted in the art of self-hate, and he couldn’t stand the idea of anyone, especially himself, giving a shit. Even the way she stroked his eyebrow was driving him mad, and he turned his face back to press his forehead against the floor.

“Come to bed when you can walk again,” she said and stood to leave him keeled over in a tight, fetal ball on the hardwoods. Before she left the room, she turned back to throw in her last two cents now that she held his attention hostage. “You know, you can be a stupid sonofabitch sometimes, but I think signing that P.O.A. was the most brilliant decision you’ve ever made. It just might save your dumb life. We were gonna wait to tell you tomorrow, but what the hell. Tough love, aye?” There was no point in putting it off, waiting for some family intervention where he’d have his mouth back to toss his artful little ploys into an open forum. “You’re going back to rehab for a month. That’s 30 days of sobriety, Vegeta, in case you needed me to help you with the fucking math.”

With that she left him to recover, but she didn’t go to bed as she’d suggested. She wasn’t stupid enough to leave him to his own devices and opted for the couch in the adjacent den to lay in wait. She meant to stay awake until he found his way up from the floor, but unintentionally she must have fallen asleep, because the light blue hue of dawn was showing through the windows when she was awoken by pretty arpeggios scaling across the piano.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bulma's bottom may have finally been met, and this girl swallowed a lot of bullshit throughout the past 20 chapters that was 100% undeserved, selflessly setting aside her dignity out of fear and love. But everyone has limits, and it's a miracle she didn't explode before now. If you were worried about the mental abuse he'd been putting her through, I hope her first big act of vindication was satisfying!


End file.
